Harry Potter, Champion Mode
by Mist of Rainbows
Summary: Harry dies after Hogwarts and forgot to save the game...
1. Chapter 1

An: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the recognizable characters, would be really nice even with the various plot holes.

Harry groaned as he found himself in a dark void looking at large glowing red letters, "Game over?"

The letters shifted and changed to read,

New Game

Load Game

Options

He stared at the words in confusion as he tried to figure out what happened and how he ended up wherever the hell this was. "Okay, last thing I remember is walking to the hotel then the Knight Bus appearing then nothing… Well, shite!" He reached out and touched Load Game.

An ethereal voice said, "I'm sorry, you don't have a saved game to load."

Harry snorted. "Right, because my life is a damned video game. Okay screw it, let's just go with the insanity for a moment." He reached out and touched the options menu. He looked over the difficulty settings. "Current difficulty Ironman, no saving the game, no inventory, no area map, no character sheet and no hope… right."

He looked at the other difficulty modes. "Easy mode starts at Hogwarts… normal starts right before I get my letter… difficult mode starts after Uncle Vernon opens the letter and Champion starts when I was a baby and I get to watch my mother die again… I'd get to see my family and pick up more mental scars." He shook his head. "Screw it, I get a save game feature, an inventory, an area map and a chance to save my parents and the world still works like normal." He knew it probably wasn't going to be that easy but he was going to try. He selected Champion mode then looked at the rest of the options.

He didn't see a point in changing the music settings though he played with them a bit to make sure there wasn't something like theme music when he was in danger or something, sadly there wasn't or at least it wasn't that easy because he'd have to put up with background music all the time. "That would drive me crazy… if I'm not already crazy." He reached out and enabled the tutorial. "Maybe this will help."

He gave the options 'page' one last look then blinked as he noticed an enabled toggle labeled, PG Mode. "What the hell?" He tapped it so that he could get a description.

The ethereal voice said, "PG Mode, none of that naughty business here, teachers abound, protective older brothers, mothers that watch daughters like hawks, and if all else fails, buses. Be assured with this enabled things will be squeaky clean with little more than the occasional hug or kiss."

"Buses? You have to be shitting me… I died because of a fucking PG setting! Fuck that and the horse it rode in on!" He hit the little circle and disabled the 'feature' that had probably gotten him killed. He looked over the rest of the page to make sure there wasn't anything else he needed to disable. He exited back to the main menu and hit create new game trying not to think about the fact that his entire life might have been a video game. He blinked as he found himself in the middle of a room with a small bed, a dresser and various stuffed animals. He frowned as he realized that he couldn't move.

"Welcome to Champion mode. You have enabled the tutorial, that means that the world will work like a game until the tutorial is completed despite the difficulty setting. The first order of business is to save the game, you may do so by touching your nose and saying Save Game or by saying Merlin Save Game in case you can't touch your nose. Please save the game."

Harry blinked as he found himself able to move. He brought his rather tiny hand up and looked at his rather tiny fingers. He brought his finger to his nose. "Save Game."

"Game saved! To load the game merely touch your nose and say Load Game or say Merlin Load Game. The next order of business is your inventory."

Harry blinked as a translucent window appeared filled with a picture of a dark haired baby and various equipment slots surrounding him. "Two rings, an amulet, a belt, pants, shoes, shirt, armor… armor? Really?"

The ethereal voice said, "Armor is important, it helps keep you from dying."

"I guess that might have helped the last time around… Okay, face slot item, helmet, gloves and bracers." He glanced down at the twenty inventory boxes and the little arrows and tabs. "Potions, ingredients, books, weapons, armor and miscellaneous."

"Pick up a stuffed animal and put it in your inventory."

Harry walked over to a stuffed bear and picked it up with both hands then almost dropped it when it growled at him. "Right, charmed toys." He stuffed the bear into the first box.

"Congratulations, to remove it merely reach in and grab it."

"Okay, that's useful." Harry could think of a couple of times that he could have used an inventory to hide things. He pulled the bear back out of his inventory.

"Excellent, that's the spirit. To open or close your inventory just concentrate on opening or closing it."

Harry put the toy back in his inventory then focused on closing it. He smiled when the inventory window vanished.

"Excellent, the area map is accessed by thinking about your map, it can map buildings you explore as well as well as outdoor locations. To bring up your map, merely concentrate on it."

Harry concentrated on the map and smiled as a translucent three dimensional image of the room appeared. "Now what?"

"You can touch the image and spin it if you like. Once you're done with that, proceed to the door."

Harry reached out and twisted the map a couple of different ways including upside down before putting it back to how it started and closing the map. He walked over to the door, reached up and tried the handle and sighed when he found it locked.

"Locked doors, some doors are locked, some require a key and some can't be opened until later in the story. In Champion mode this doesn't normally apply but this is the tutorial. Explore your room then take a nap to complete the tutorial."

Harry reached up and touched his nose. "Save Game."

"Game Saved."

Harry concentrated on the door, opened his mouth and realized that he didn't know the unlocking charm, he could remember Hermione using it but he didn't remember the wand movements or the incantation. He blinked as he realized that he didn't remember the incantations for any of the spells he'd previously known. "Cheating fucking bastards!"

The ethereal voice replied almost cheerfully, "I'm sorry, all specific spell knowledge has been erased."

Harry took a breath then let it out as he tried not to throw a tantrum like his cousin or Malfoy. He ran through the last seven years in his mind, he could remember various classes and mixing potions but nothing specific about how to make any particular potion or spell work. "Okay, I'm going to kill someone when I get out of here."

He glanced around the room. "Okay, think Harry, you're seventeen, not one and a half. What do you have to work with?" He scanned the room looking for anything he could use to get out of his room. "The door is locked, the window is too high to reach, I've got stuffed animals and whatever is in the dresser..." He trailed off as he noticed the fact that the clock on the wall was stopped at half past five o'clock with the second hand paused over the three. "Right, tutorial…" He thought back to some of the computer games that Dudley had played over the years. "That probably means I've got time as long as I don't take a nap or do something that advances things."

He grinned as he opened his inventory and started tossing stuffed animals, blocks, little toy cars and other such toys into it. Sure, they might not be useful but they were his and if things went as he suspected they were going to go, the house would be destroyed and the stuffed animals would be left to rot or locked up in a vault. He picked up the comfortable looking throw rug and put it in his inventory then walked over to the drawers and opened them.

The ethereal voice said, "Containers, in most difficulties containers hold either random loot or specially placed loot. Of course some containers are empty, searching them can turn up surprising treasures. However Champion difficulty is more realistic which means outside of the tutorial you won't find random loot in most places."

Harry looked over the baby clothes he found in the bottom drawer then frowned slightly as he found a small lion hat that looked suspiciously like the one Luna had at the Quidditch game only smaller.

"Gear, certain items increase stats, appearance and or style. Equip the lion hat for a bonus to cuteness."

Harry pulled out the lion hat and equipped it.

"Congratulations, you have found your first piece of magical loot."

Harry paused as he thought back to one of the times that Dudley had tossed a controller at him after he hadn't saved and had gotten killed after finding something nice. He touched his nose. "Save Game."

"Game saved."

He stuffed the clothes into his inventory. It wasn't that he really thought he was going to need them, it was just that he didn't see any point in leaving them to be destroyed either. He reached up and pulled open the second drawer and jumped back in shock as a large snake jumped out at him. He sighed in relief as he realized that the 'snake' was a cloth snake though it was certainly moving around and hissing like it was real. He blinked as everything froze.

The ethereal voice said, "Welcome to the combat tutorial. Combat is a necessary part of life or at least it is for adventurers. If this was Easy Mode, combat would be turn based, as it's not, do your best to beat the enemy into submission. In Easy or Normal modes, monsters drop loot, in the other difficulties they only drop loot appropriate to what is in their pockets."

"Right… because charming stuffed animals to attack children is sane?" Harry asked warily.

"The animated stuffed snake that Padfoot enchanted might not seem like much to an adult wizard but to a child it is a fearsome playmate and can result in nap time coming early. As this is only a test of your battle prowess the snake will not initiate combat but will defend itself once attacked so I suggest you find a weapon."

Harry stared at the 'large' cloth snake that was slithering back and forth between him and the dresser. "I'm going to murder Sirius, I swear." He glanced around for something that he might be able to use as a weapon. Sadly, nothing jumped out at him which wasn't all that surprising considering he was all of one and a half or so. "Okay, let's see blocks and leggings…" He pulled a pair of his pajamas out of his inventory and tied the end closed then filled the top part with some wooden blocks then tied the second leg around the toy so that it made a sap or at least a childish version of a sap. He looked his improvised weapon over. "This can't end well."

He grabbed his 'weapon' with both hands then cautiously walked over and swung with all his might at the cloth snake hoping to get a decent opening shot. Sadly, his opening shot didn't hurt the snake as much as he would have liked as the creature lashed out at him and bit him which actually hurt a lot. "Shite!" he swung his weapon at the snake again and scored a minor hit only to be hit with the tail and tripped. He winced as he banged his head on the ground then screamed as the snake wrapped itself around him and squeezed.

"Thus ends the tutorial."

Harry blinked as he found himself in his bed as the door exploded. He wanted to scream as he found himself unable to do much of anything as the event was obviously scripted. Watching the entire scene play out was horrible and bitter sweet as he got to see his mother but he couldn't save her, couldn't fix it. He wanted to shout, he wanted to scream no, but nothing came out. "Merlin Load Game!"

The ethereal voice said, "Congratulations, you have discovered the delight of the load game feature, it is great for undoing mistakes."

Harry sighed in relief when he realized that the second drawer was closed and that there was no sign of the cloth snake. "Okay… that hurt way too much to be a dream." He climbed up on the edge of the bottom drawer then opened the third drawer from the bottom then jumped back and glared at the dresser. "Okay… maybe it was just the second drawer." He cautiously walked back over and tried to climb up so that he could look into the third drawer. He scowled as he found it nearly impossible to pull himself up the dresser with the third drawer open. "This is going to be a problem."

He pushed the third drawer closed then stepped on the handle of the second drawer and grabbed the edges of the third drawer and worked on climbing the dresser. He scowled as he slipped and fell and lost a fifth of his life when he fell and hit his head on the ground. "Fuck."

"Climbing increased by 1. Acrobatics increased by 1. Falling isn't fun but the more you do it and survive the better at it you get at least on Easy or Normal mode. The other modes don't work that way."

Harry rubbed his head where he'd smacked it then stared at the health meter that had appeared. "Health bar?"

"Champion mode normally doesn't have a health bar but I've temporarily enabled it during the tutorial."

"Thanks…" Harry went back to climbing and fell a couple more times, losing some health each time.

"Climbing increased by 1."

"Okay this isn't working." As much as he had a feeling that increasing his climbing skill would help, he couldn't afford the lost health if he was going to fight the cloth snake and win. He touched his nose. "Load game."

"Game loaded."

He smiled as he found himself standing in front of the dresser pain free. "Okay, let's try this again." He pushed the bottom drawer closed then pulled the throw rug out of his inventory and set it in front of the dresser then piled his collection of stuffed animals on the rug. "That should help."

He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry grinned as he started climbing the dresser. He scowled as he fell off the dresser and landed on the stuffed animals.

"Climbing increased by 1. Acrobatics increased by 1"

His scowl turned into a smile as he realized that he hadn't lost any life for falling on the stuffed animals. "Okay, this is abusable." He stood up and rearranged the stuffed animals then touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry spend a couple of minutes working on his climbing skills until he could reliably climb up the dresser and get to the top. He grinned as he looked around his room from the top of his dresser. 'Hermione would be screaming right now.' He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He focused on bouncing then jumped off the dresser onto the pile of stuffed animals. He winced as the pile wasn't quite large enough to prevent some damage. "Merlin Load Game."

He smiled as he found himself back on the top of the dresser. "Okay, let's see what is in the top two drawers." He sat down carefully then worked the drop drawer open. He emptied the underwear and socks into his inventory and smiled when he found a pair or faintly glowing booties. He equipped the shoes.

"You have found a magical method of moving around. These children's shoes have been enchanted to slide around on the floor."

"Right… yeah not while I'm climbing." He pulled the boots off and stuck them in his inventory then closed the drawer and worked on opening the second drawer down. He smiled as he found several shirts that were charmed with different designs. He stuffed them in his inventory then closed the drawer and climbed down thankful that his increased climbing skill made it easy to get up and down the dresser. He glanced over at the window then at the dresser. "It can't be that easy, can it?"

It turned out that moving a dresser when you're one and a half isn't that simple. He couldn't lift the dresser and he couldn't push it, it was simply too heavy. "Well crap." He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He equipped his sliding booties then took a couple of practice steps and found that they actually had decent traction when he didn't want to slide. He walked over so that he was on the other side of the dresser from the window then charged it. He winced as he bounced off the dresser and fell on his behind.

"Special attack learned, Sliding Charge."

Harry started laughing as he realized that the dresser had shifted an inch. It was horrible progress but it was progress. He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

The ethereal voice said, "Game saved."

He skated back over and lined up his next shot and did another sliding charge. He winced as he slipped, fell and slammed his face into the dresser and lost a decent fraction of his health. "Okay, maybe it's not going to be that easy." He made a couple more attempts and realized that he only succeeded in doing the Sliding Charge about a third of the time without getting hurt. He shook his head and loaded his save. "Okay, I've got a save game, I might as well use it."

He charged the dresser and hit it with his sliding charge. He grinned as the dresser moved without him losing a sliver of health or anything. "Awesome." He moved back into place then saved his game and worked on moving the dresser into position without hurting himself. Sure, saving and loading the 'game' felt like cheating but he didn't really care at this point because he didn't have anything that could restore his health currently.

He wasn't sure how long it took to move the dresser into place under the window, ten minutes, twenty, it certainly felt like a long time with all the save game loading he had to do. He collected his stuffed animals and put them in his inventory then climbed the dresser and reached up and opened the window with a triumphant grin. 'Okay, let's see what I can find.' He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry carefully crawled out of the window onto the roof. He crawled to the edge of the roof and looked down. "Okay, if I was Neville I might have a shot of surviving that without being critically injured." He glanced back and forth between the two chimneys on either side of the house. "Okay, that might work." He made his way over to the closest chimney then pulled himself up so that he could look down it. He smiled slightly when he found a faintly glowing star. He reached out and grabbed it.

"You have found one of the secret stars, stars can be traded in for extra abilities before you leave the tutorial. They are typically found in out of the way places. Just drag your star to your portrait on your inventory page when you want to use them."

"Okay, that's useful." He touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry dragged the star to his picture then looked over the list. There were several categories he could pick from, wandless magic, potions, defense, charms, transfiguration, flight, defensive abilities. He looked at the wandless section. 'Minor telekinesis, summoning objects, banishing objects, changing the color of things and setting things on fire… okay, that would be useful against the cloth snake.' He looked at the potions list. Sadly, nothing jumped out as being all that useful at the moment. He looked over the defense list. 'Natural duelist, exceptional shield charms, powerful attack spells." He looked at the charms, "Increased ability to learn charms… unlocked ability, magical knowledge since the last save doesn't fade when the game is loaded… okay, that's broken as shit… but it's a decent ways up the chain and nothing that helps me find more stars."

Harry shook his head. He looked over the flight options there were a couple of broom options that looked interesting, better speed, better control that he'd probably taken in his previous life but one option stood out as being completely awesome. "Evans' float, reduces the damage from falls as long as I'm conscious, nice and two stars would remove damage from falls completely and three lets me fly without a broom… yeah okay, I know where I'm spending my stars." He selected the Evans Float ability.

"You have unlocked a passive bloodline ability. No action is required to activate this ability."

Harry carefully made his way over to the other chimney and checked it. He smiled as he saw something shiny about ten feet down the shaft that might be another star. "Okay, this is going to be a pain." He climbed down as best he could, trying to press himself against the walls of the chimney so that he could safely climb down. Sadly, being able to climb a dresser wasn't even close to enough to be able to climb down a chimney. He slipped and fell. Ten feet down he collected the star automatically as his feet hit it, thirteen feet down he tripped a magical trap and died as a ball of fire consumed him.

"Congratulations you died during the tutorial, don't you feel proud."

Harry blinked as he found himself back in the formless void. He reached out and hit load game and sighed in relief as he found himself back on the roof. "Cheating bastards." He wasn't sure who he meant, the game, the people that stuck him wherever this was or his parents for setting up a death trap in the chimney. He used his star and looked at the defense options. "Dragon's blood, resistant to fire, giant blood, a quirk of genetics or a giant in your bloodline grants you some ability to resist stunners and they're scaleable." He smiled as he noticed one option that removed the requirement to eat which would be good if he got stuck with the Dursleys again. "Longbottom bounce, 50% chance to bounce from a fall."

Harry shook his head as he thought about his friend. "Hopefully, we can avoid the crap this time around." He assigned his star to Evans Float then looked down at the ground and jumped. He winced as his health meter dropped by a tenth for the two story drop. "Ouch."

He looked around the yard for anything interesting, sadly other than a couple of rocks he didn't see anything he could grab thanks to it being a tutorial. He made his way over to the front gate and tried to open it.

"You have reached the edge of the current map."

Harry sighed as he looked out into the darkness. "So much for that idea." He walked up to the front door and checked the handle. "Of course it's locked. Fine, be that way." He made his way around the side of the house looking for anything interesting. He smiled when he saw the tool shed around back. He walked over and checked the door and scowled when he found it locked. 'Seriously, they're wizards and no one can find the place.' He glared at the lock. "Unlock, unlock, unlock, unlock you stupid piece of shite!"

Harry blinked as the lock popped open.

The ethereal voice said, "You have successfully used wandless magic. Unlock ability learned. This simple trick can open anything not charmed against magic."

"That's something." He opened the door and looked over the contents of the small shed. He wasn't sure what he'd need the shears for but the fifty foot rope definitely would help with the chimney. He grabbed the hammer and box of nails just in case. He grinned when he opened a tool box and found a chocolate bar as well as a spool of wire and wire cutters. He ate the chocolate bar and blinked in shock when his health was restored to full. "Right… video game." He shook his head. "This would be easier if I had a broom." He moved the toolbox over to the bench so that he could climb up onto the bench. He smiled at the locked cabinet above the toolbox. "Okay, now we're getting somewhere."

He pointed his hand at the lock. "Unlock."

"The lock has been charmed against basic unlocking charms."

"Now we're getting somewhere." Harry pulled out the spool of wire and put off a piece and pulled out a nail and attempted to pick the lock on the cabinet. He wasn't all that surprised when his 'lockpick' broke and vanished as that seemed fairly standard in the video games he'd heard of. He was rather surprised that after the fifth time he tried to pick the lock he got an announcement telling him that his lockpicking skill had increased.

The ethereal voice said, "Wizards don't always think about muggle solutions. If you weren't worse than a drunken monkey you might have a chance of picking this lock."

Harry muttered, "Thanks." sarcastically as he cut another lockpick and went to work. Twenty or thirty minutes later he managed to grind another fourteen points in the skill before he ran out of wire. "Okay, I'll just have to come back." He absently touched his nose and said "Save Game." before he realized that he might have just screwed himself as he wasn't sure how he was supposed to get back to his room.

"Crap. Damn it Harry, stop being Ron, think. Okay, I've got a save, if I have to I'll work on climbing the walls." He walked back around the house and rang the doorbell. He offered an innocent smile as the door was yanked open ten seconds later by man with a wand that looked like his father's pictures.

James asked in disbelief as he lowered his wand slightly. "Merlin Harry, how?"

Harry wanted to say any number of things but only one word came out, "Pop!"

The ethereal voice said, "Dialog options during the tutorial are limited."

James rubbed his face which his free hand. "What am I going to do with you? Okay, let's get you back upstairs for your nap before Lily catches you down here, she'll blame me." He reached down and picked Harry up then stepped back in and closed the door. "I'm going to have to charm the room against apparition, I swear."

"Pop." Harry wanted to scream as he once again tried to give them some type of warning. He glanced around the living room as his father took him up the stairs. 'Looks like the kitchen is to the left and the library is to the right and there is a door under the stairs that might go somewhere interesting.' Harry blinked as he was taken to the second floor then up to the attic. He'd half expected the jig to be up as James opened the door to his room but to his surprise the window was closed, a bunch of stuffed animals were scattered around and the dresser was back where it had started. "What?"

James said, "Mommy is working on something important. I'll talk to her about letting you fly around on your broomstick after your nap, no more popping outside, okay?"

"Broom!" Harry wanted to roll his eyes but he couldn't do more than smile at his father as he turned and left so that he could get a nap. Harry sighed as the door closed and he could move again. "Dad! Dad!" He felt his stomach drop as he realized that his father couldn't hear him. "Okay, this sucks. They're right there and I can't do crap."

He walked around and picked up more stuffed animals and added them to his collection in his inventory then touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry walked over and worked on slide charging the dresser back into position, loading as he needed to. He climbed up and out onto the roof then checked the first chimney to see if the star had respawned, sadly though not surprisingly it hadn't. He walked over to the other chimney and pulled his rope out of his inventory. He tied it around the chimney then spent a couple of minutes tying knots in it so that he had a hope in hell of climbing down the chimney. He touched his nose then said, "Save game."

"Game saved."

He carefully climbed down the chimney using the rope so that he could reach the star. He grabbed the star then slowly and painfully climbed back up the knotted rope trying to get out of the chimney before his stamina gave out and he fell to his death. It didn't take too many tries and loaded games before he realized that he didn't have enough stamina to make it back up the rope which meant that he either needed to go through the fire or find something that would let him restore his stamina. 'I should have kept the chocolate bar.'

He sighed as he made his way back into his room and down the drawers. 'Okay, I need more stamina, maybe I'll increase my stamina if I kill the monster.' He opened the bottom drawer and looted it when he found it once again full. He used his sheers on a set of pajama bottoms then used the rocks he'd picked up to create a decent sap and equipped it. He touched his nose and saved his game.

"Rematch." Harry opened the second drawer then jumped back as the snake came out. He used both hands on his weapon and slammed it into the snake's head. Sadly the cloth snake seemed fairly immune to blunt damage or maybe it was just that he was only one and a half. Either way, the snake quickly 'killed' him again which resulted in him having to load the game.

"Screw it." He pulled out his shears and tried to equip them.

"I'm sorry, children aren't allowed to use dangerous tools."

"You're fucking kidding me… tell that to my bloody aunt!" Harry shouted. He scowled as he put the shears back in his inventory then climbed up the drawers and looted the top drawer hoping to find something that would help him, another piece of gear that gave him some advantage, some type of belt he could secure a line to or some type of candy bar that would refill his stamina. It wasn't until the second drawer that he found a hidden candy bar. He saved his 'game' then climbed up the dresser, out the window and over to the chimney.

He climbed down the chimney as quickly as he could, grabbed the star then headed back up. He tossed the chocolate bar to his inventory portrait as he started to run out of stamina. He sighed in relief as he managed to get back to the roof without falling to his death. He saved his game then made his way back into his room and opened the second drawer then jumped back. "Yeah, I don't care if it was a joke, I'm punching Sirius in the nuts for this."

Harry used his second star and selected wandless magic fire and smiled as knowledge flowed into his head. He walked over to the other side of the room, raised his hands and created a ball of fire. He focused on the ball of fire until it was about double what it started as then tossed it at the snake. The fire washed over the creature burning it horribly. He swung his sap at the creature's head to daze it as his fire finished it off.

"Congratulations you've managed to defeat your first enemy. Level increased by 2. Perk awarded for reaching level 3, "Mage, magic damage increased by 20%."

Harry smiled as he saw the shirt that the monster dropped. "Hug me?"

The ethereal voice said, "This uncommon shirt increases the user's cuteness."

He equipped the shirt then tossed his dirty shirt in his inventory. He touched his nose. "Save Game."

"Game saved."

"Okay, let's see what you have." Harry smiled in triumph when he found the star in the second drawer. "Okay, this should give me fire resistance." He grinned when he found a potion of flame freezing in the drawer. "I guess I don't need fire resistance, yet."

He added a second level of Evans Float then headed up to the chimney and drank the potion then jumped down the chimney. He winced as the flames surrounded him but thankfully they didn't do anything other than feel pleasantly cool. He grinned as he landed softly in the fireplace.

"Acrobatics increased by 2."

'Okay, that has potential.' He stepped out of the fireplace and looked around the small library filled with shelves filled with books, a couch, a comfortable chair and a table and notes. 'A looting we will go, a looting we will go.'


	2. Chapter 2

An: See bottom of page for minor crossover information.

He smiled as he worked on looting his parent's library. It wasn't nearly as impressive as the library at the Black's house but it was a lot better than what he had currently which was a single fire spell or ability as it wasn't even a real spell. Once he had everything he could loot safely secured in his inventory he gave the place a second search. He grinned as he found a star under one of the chairs out of sight unless you were lying on the ground.

He glanced at the counter in the corner of his vision that told him how much longer his flame freezing potion would last. 'Fifteen minutes.' He touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He used the star so that he could fly then flew up into the air and played around with his power for a couple of minutes before he flew back up the chimney then down to test if the flames tried to kill him, sadly they did though they weren't all that effective thanks to the potion. He flew over the roof then dropped his flight power and fell to the ground.

"Acrobatics increased by 1."

He smiled as he stood up and dusted himself off, thankfully his Evan's power kept him from being injured by a fall as long as he was conscious. 'I guess that's one way to grind the skill which might be helpful if I end up somewhere I can't do magic.' He walked over to the shed and smiled when he saw the toolbox was closed. He opened it and picked up the spool of wire and the old slightly rusty hacksaw he found. He put the hacksaw in his inventory then cut a lockpick and went back to picking the cabinet door.

He smiled after three minutes when the cabinet opened and he saw a star inside along with a roll of duct tape. He grabbed the star then put the duct tape in his inventory and looked at it. "Endless roll of duct tape… nice."

He turned and flew back up to the roof. He touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He flew down the first chimney into the kitchen.

Lily shouted, "Harry James Potter!"

"Eek!" He flew back up the chimney.

"Stealth, the parental units have been alerted to the fact that you're not in your room, using stealth mode can help avoid detection."

Harry grinned as he flew up and out of the chimney then down the other chimney. He ducked behind the couch as the door opened and crouched for stealth. He blinked as several dozen squeaky toys appeared out of thin air. 'What the hell is wrong with this tutorial?' He held as still as he could.

Lily shouted, "James! I'm going to kill Sirius!"

James called out, "Why?"

"Because this is obviously his fault," she said, as if stating the sky were blue.

"Let's worry less about that and more about how Harry got back up the chimney. I mean I knew he hated naps but this is a bit extreme."

Lily snorted. "Which is why this has to be Sirius's fault. There's no way he should be able to apparate outside."

"I'm sure he's just trying to give us a good laugh," James replied as he headed up the stairs.

Lily sighed as she walked out and shut the door behind her.

Harry glared at the squeaky toys. He reached out and picked one up carefully.

"Find Traps skill increased by 1."

Harry stuffed the 'trap' in his inventory then touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He worked on 'disarming' the various 'traps' until one went off which caused a loud squeaky sound that had his mother running. He waved at his mother as she burst through the door then flew up the chimney. 'Sure, maybe he couldn't talk with her but he could at least have some fun before the tutorial ended. He flew over to the other chimney and down it thankful that the second chimney didn't have a flame trap on it as he didn't have a lot of time left on his potion. He glanced around the kitchen then flew over to the door and peeked out. He saw his father dart past so he dropped back into stealth mode and scowled at the crazy number of squeaky toys that suddenly appeared in the hallway, most likely thanks to his horrible stealth skill. He considered flying over them but realized he needed the practice sneaking about. 'Screw it, I'm going for it!'

"Stealth increased by 1."

He carefully worked his way to the couch picking up squeaky toys as he went. He ducked behind the couch then tossed a squeaky toss back down the hallway then waited for his parents to rush out and into the kitchen.

"Stealth increased by 1."

He flew up the stairs and retraced his father's earlier path, cheating this time by staying off the ground so that he could avoid the annoying toys. He grinned as he flew over to the door to his room and unlocked it.

The ethereal voice said. "Unlocking doors from the other side can clear obstacles and make movement easier."

Harry touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry opened the door to his room and looked around the room, nothing had reset. He headed back down the hall then ducked into a potions lab when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He hid behind a chair just in case someone peeked into the room and stayed as quiet as he could. 'Okay, I'm going to need to figure out a way to kill Riddle.' He held his breath as the door opened then shut after five seconds. He waited a minute just to make sure that his mother had left then he stood up and looted the room of everything he could fit in his inventory. He smiled as he found four shrinking potions mixed in with the random potions. 'Okay, if I can get them small enough, I bet I can fit them in my inventory.'

He frowned slightly as he tried to open the desk and found that it was locked. He tried his unlock ability on it and frowned when it didn't open. 'Paranoid magic users. You'd think they didn't trust me to stay out of stuff.' He pulled out his spool of wire and wire cutters and cut a couple of picks. 'I'm going to have to grab some actual tools at some point.' He went to work and popped the lock on the desk after three tries. He climbed up on the chair and looked into the desk drawer. 'Quills, paper, color changing ink and a set of glowing keys.' He grinned as he took the keys.

The ethereal voice said, "Congratulations you have acquired wizard keys, these ancient artifacts create a pocket dimension where you can store your loot and go through portals to lands of adventure. Be careful as misaligned portals lead to Diggle-hell."

'Right, because you can't be more specific?' Harry jumped as the door opened and a younger Sirius walked in. "Padfoot!"

Sirius stared at the lockpicks in Harry's hand. "Right… I found him!"

"No! Bad Padfoot!" Harry charged Padfoot then slid between his legs. He briefly considered tagging him in the nuts for the snake, but he was going to be in enough trouble anyway. "Free!"

"And I lost him!" Sirius laughed as he followed Harry at a fast walk.

Harry felt the pit of his stomach drop as the front door exploded and he saw Voldemort. He charged him, readied his weapon which caused it to appear in his hand and slid between his legs smashing his rock 'sap' into Riddle's family jewels. "Head shot!"

Riddle let out a high pitched squeak as he went down with a look of intense shock and surprise on his face.

Harry raised his hands and channeled fire magic into Riddle's face to distract him then brought his sap down on the wizard's head repeatedly as he worked on setting him on fire.

"Critical hit, boss is stunned."

Harry used his star and selected giant's blood for the strength increase and the magic resistance, he flailed at the pop up that appeared and hit 'Potter' then grabbed the stunned wizard by the back of his head and proceeded to bash his face into the floor while burning him with the other hand.

"Critical hit, boss is stunned."

James ran around the corner with his wand out and stopped and stared as Harry twisted Voldemort's neck 180 degrees with several loud cracking noises. "What the bloody hell?!"

"Bad man!" Harry continued pounding the man's head in until he got the notice that he'd leveled.

"Level increased by 12. Error! Server reset in fifteen minutes."

James shouted, "Stupefy!"

Harry dodged his father's spell then grabbed Voldemort's wand, twisted it the same way that James had just done and shouted, "Stupefy!" pushing as much magic into it as he could. He was relieved his spell actually formed and struck James much to his shock.

"Stupefy Learned."

Harry twisted the wand and hit Sirius with a stunner mostly because Sirius was too shocked to block it. He grinned as he turned and zapped his mother as she came running to check on him. He pulled out his shrinking potions, gave each of them a dose then stuck them in his inventory along with their wands. He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game!"

"Game Saved."

Harry turned and ran for the stairs leading to his parents' room. He pointed his wand at the family cat and stunned it then ran over and picked it and put it in his inventory. He ran toward his parents' room, rather happy that it was unlocked so he didn't have to waste time unlocking it. He flew over to his mother's dresser and looted her jewelry box then grabbed the brooms propped up against the dresser and stuffed them in his inventory. He took a quick look in the closet and grabbed two shimmering obviously magical dresses and what might very well be a dragonhide jacket then grabbed a familiar shimmering cloak and put it in his inventory. 'I thought Dumbledore had that... must have looted it after they died, fucker.'

Harry saved the game then went room by room, looking for important artifacts.

"Five minutes until server shutdown."

Harry stuffed the pensieve from the den in his inventory then headed down the stairs and opened the door to the closet. He gave it a quick look, grabbed the star in the boot then headed out to see if he could find Sirius's bike. He frowned as he didn't find the bike in the front yard then ran around the back and smiled as he saw the familiar bike with a star sitting on it. He ran over, grabbed the star and picked up the saddlebags and stuffed them in his inventory. He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He used his three stars and dropped them into charms for the boost to learning and for the unlock so that his magical skills since his last save weren't reset by loading the game. He touched his nose and saved the game again.

"Game saved. Server resetting..."

Harry blinked as he found himself back in the black void looking at a large screen. "Patch notes… Voldemort's death was unexpected and judged to be an error therefore the server has been reset. Oh, fuck you! How the hell is me killing him unfair?" He blinked as he found himself back where he started in his room. "That sucked…" He trailed off as he opened his inventory and realized that he still had everything including a copy of his parents and Sirius. "Okay, maybe that's not so bad." He floated up off the ground. "Okay, yeah, I could get used to this."

He floated over to the door and checked it only to find it locked. "I was hoping that part hadn't reset." He flew over to the dresser and opened the second drawer then jumped back as the cloth snake jumped out at him. He brought his hands up and lit the snake on fire. "Fuck that." He walked over and stared at the star in his dresser. "They… they completely reset it, oh hell yeah!" He grabbed the star and frowned as there wasn't a flame freezing potion unlike the last time. "What the hell? Weird luck?"

He quickly searched through the clothes and found a slightly glowing pair of jeans. "That works." He equipped the tough guy paints that gave him a boost to vitality and stamina regeneration then looted the rest of the clothes and saved his game just to make sure that something unexpected didn't kill him. He flew up to the window and opened it then flew out. 'This almost makes up for stealing my kill.' He flew over to the chimney and grabbed the star then flew over to the other chimney and looked down at the second star. He touched his nose, "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry used both stars in his inventory dropping them into dragon blood for fire immunity and magic resistance. He blinked at the popup that appeared. "Which parent has dragon blood?" He selected his mother as he was fairly sure he'd selected his father for the giant's blood in his scramble against Voldemort.

"Updated."

Harry flew down and grabbed the star in the chimney then flew back up and over the backyard then stopped using his flight power and dropped the two stories to the ground.

"Acrobatics increased by 1."

Harry grinned as he walked over to the shed and pointed at it. "Unlock."

He opened the door and flew over to the cabinet and started working on the lock. 'Being able to fly almost makes up for being small.' He grinned as after several tries the cabinet opened revealing a star and a pair of small glowing work gloves. He took the gloves and put them in his inventory then looked at them. "Casting gloves, 20% extra magic damage for wandless magic." He shook his head. "First I've ever heard of someone pulling off something like that."

He equipped the gloves then used both his stars and dropped them in the giant bloodline for even more magic resistance and strength.

The ethereal voice said, "Updated."

"Okay… there's at least two more stars, under the chair and in the closet and maybe three if Sirius shows up with his bike. I should probably figure out what the wizarding keys are before I do anything too crazy." He touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry opened his inventory and pulled his glowing 'wizarding' keys out. While he'd heard of charmed keys before, he'd never heard any stories about artifact level keys or items that could create pocket dimensions, just expanded space. He pushed some magic into the keys and blinked as the world twisted and he found himself in a large stone room with four stone pillars with goblets of purple fire mounted on each pillar. He frowned slightly as he saw an almost technological looking device next to an archway. "That's different."

There were a number of empty bottles and random trash in the corners of the room. He glanced at the open doorway into a hall at the back of the room, also filled with bottles and trash and decide he'd give it a miss for now.

He flew over and looked the strange device, other than the runes on the 'keyboard' it looked more technological than magical. "Too much to ask that the keys were in English. They don't even look like any of the runes Hermione studied."

He reached out and pushed one of the runes then the off-color button trusting in his save game in case something went drastically wrong. To his surprise the arch lit up with a twisted mix of black spots and crimson light. "I guess that means it worked."

He walked over to the 'portal' then stepped through. To his mild surprise he didn't end up dying horribly or anything, he merely appeared in a large stone chamber with strange looking monsters, they reminded him of penguins with fat almost comical drills in place of a muzzle. "What the hell?"

The ethereal voice said, "Funny that you should mention hell, this is Diggle Hell, a random monster filled dungeon you get sent when the proper coordinates aren't entered correctly. In order to get back to your storage vault you must reach the end of the maze and exit via the portal."

He blinked as all of the monsters started moving toward him at once. He screamed as a creepy blue Diggle killed him with a blast of lightning. "Okay… that sucked." He reached out and carefully hit the load game 'icon'. He sighed as he found himself back in 'his' backyard. 'Okay, let's try that again.' He opened his inventory and pulled his wizarding keys out of his inventory then pushed magic through them.

He smiled as he found himself back in his storage vault. He pulled one of his stuffed animals out of his pocket and dropped it to the ground. He pulled a squeaky toy out of his inventory then tossed it in the air and pushed magic into his keys before it could hit the floor. He smiled as he found himself back in 'his' backyard. He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

"Might as well work on training for a bit." He flew up two stories then let himself fall and hit the ground.

"Acrobatics increased by 1."

He flew back up, dropped and repeated the process a couple of dozen times as he considered his next couple of moves. "If this isn't a dream and I don't just skip the next ten years or something then I'm going to have to grow up all over again. Maybe this time I'll have a chance at a normal life, yeah, who am I kidding, I'd be bored to tears in a normal school and I was almost done at Hogwarts which puts me at fourth or maybe fifth year by international standards considering how bad some of the classes were."

Now that he had a chance to step back and think of it, he wasn't sure what the hell had happened, he'd entered the magical world wanting to learn everything about magic he could and then he'd met Ron and slacked off and given up doing anything other than the basics. "Not this time." He flew up as far as the 'game' would let him which was only about twenty feet above the top of the roof then dropped.

The ethereal voice said, "Acrobatics increased by 1. Acrobatics maximized. Double jump enabled."

Harry grinned as he saved his game then shook out his legs to make sure he hadn't injured himself. "I could get used to that." He jumped into the air then jumped off the 'air' and tucked and rolled as he hit the ground because he could and he figured he might as well get something out of his acrobatics skill. He snickered as he flew up to the roof and over to the chimney. He flew down the chimney and then shrieked when his clothes caught on fire thanks to the flame trap. "Crap!"

Harry dropped to the ground and rolled to try to put the flames out. "Okay, that sucked." He scowled as he looked at his damaged equipment then looked up at his very surprised mother who was in one of the chairs. "Hi!"

"Harry James Potter!" she exclaimed, angry and worried.

"Merlin, load game." He blinked as he found himself back in the backyard where he'd just saved the game. "Okay, let's avoid that." He flew up then over to the first chimney, flipped over then carefully flew down it so that he could peek to make sure that no one was inside. He flew out of the chimney then dropped into stealth mode to work on his stealth skill. He made his way carefully through the house over to the cupboard under the stairs. He quietly opened the cupboard then grabbed the star. He closed the cupboard then carefully made his way to the den to grab his family's pensieve again. He frowned as he heard his father muttering to himself in the den from the other side of the door. 'Crap, okay, I'll grab the cloak first.'

He snuck down the hallway and stopped in the middle as he realized that the 'trap' in the chimney was magical and he might be able to remove it for some type of skill boost. 'I'm going to have to test that.' He frowned slightly as he found his parent's door locked. 'Must have opened it when they were looking for me.' He pulled out his lockpicks and went to work.

Almost an entire spool of wire and several skill ups later he managed to unlock the door. He snuck in and over to his mother's jewelry box. 'I'm just borrowing it, Mum, I'll give it back, I promise.' He looted the jewelry and brooms then looted the closet. Strangely enough this time there were other expensive looking shimmery dresses and his father's invisibility cloak. He stuffed them in his inventory then headed up the stairs so that he could unlock his room.

He unlocked his room then saved his game and headed back down the stairs to the library.

Lily turned and looked at Harry. "What do you need pumpkin?"

"Hungry?" Harry would have rather said something else but the tutorial wasn't letting him.

"Did you have a good nap?"

Harry nodded.

"Okay, stay right here and I'll be right back." Lily stuck Harry to the chair with a sticking charm then left to grab a sandwich for him.

Harry blinked. 'What the hell Mum? Sticking charms, really?' He unequipped his pants which resulted in them being stuck to the chair but he was free. He flew down and grabbed the star from under the chair then flew back up and wiggled back into his pants. 'That's just sneaky.' He used the star on wandless summoning charms then started looking around the library as he waited for his mum to get back with a sandwich. He blinked as the door opened revealing a blue haired girl of around eight or nine. "Nym!"

Tonks scrunched up her face into a pig snout as she smiled at Harry. "Arry."

Harry giggled then sighed as he couldn't actually say anything useful.

Tonks let her face return to normal then sent her hair through a rainbow of colors, trying to make him laugh.

'Fine, what the hell.' Harry clapped excitedly.

Lily laughed as she walked back in. "Ah, good, he's still in his seat."

Harry pouted. "Sticky bad."

Lily flicked her wand and canceled the sticking charm. She handed Tonks the plate of sandwiches. "See if you can get him to follow you."

Tonks grinned as she headed out. "Let's go."

Harry smiled as he ran over and gave Lily's leg a hug then ran over to hug Tonk's leg. "Hug." He knew he was being silly but he was trapped in a game or a nightmare or something, he might as well get some good memories out of it.

Tonks hugged him then led him into the living room so they could eat. She set the tray of sandwiches on the end table then sat down on the couch and turned the television on. "Let's find some cartoons."

Harry frowned slightly as a glowing question mark appeared over the seat next to Tonks. 'Okay, that's not ominous.' He walked over and climbed up on the couch.

The ethereal voice asked, "Would you like to complete the tutorial?"

"No." Harry moved away from the question mark.

"No cartoons?" Tonks asked curiously.

"Tory?" Harry asked, a little annoyed that he couldn't say the s.

"Find your favorite book and I'll read you a story."

"Quest alert: Completing quests can give rewards, experience and unusual skills in easy, normal or difficult modes. Bring Nymphadora Tonks the correct book and enjoy the reward. Completing this quest will end the tutorial."

Harry blinked as a popup window appeared asking if he wanted to accept the quest. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was still frozen in time. Seeing that the no was greyed out he reached over and touched yes on the popup then glanced at the clock again and sighed in relief when he realized the clock was still paused. 'I can work with this.' He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

He headed for the stairs and scowled when he ran face first into an invisible barrier.

The ethereal voice said, "Everything you need to complete the current quest is in the living room."

'Great, I shouldn't have saved the game.' Harry pulled a large magic book off the shelf.

Tonks looked over with a frown on her face. "Nope, I'm not reading that."

Harry frowned as the book floated back up and reshelved itself. 'That's cheating.' He waited until Tonks went back to watching the television then dropped into stealth mode and grabbed the book off the shelf.

The ethereal voice said, "Pickpocketing skill unlocked. Pickpocketing or sleight of hand, is one of a stage wizard's most valuable skills. Successful use of this skill allows the user to pocket or 'produce' an object without getting caught. A failed skill check has three results, getting caught with the item, getting caught before you can successfully grab the item and having to abort the attempt before you're caught. Sneaking increases the chances of successfully stealing items."

Harry frowned slightly as he stuck the book in his inventory and noticed a red hand icon in the corner of the book's inventory slot. 'What the heck?'

"Stolen items will be marked as stolen with a red hand in your inventory, and not only will legitimate businesses refuse to buy them, but they're subject to confiscation anytime the user is caught committing criminal activity with them in their inventory. The red hand will vanish after a set period of time depending on the rarity of the stolen item."

Harry sighed as he 'stole' the next book only for an amused Tonks to look over and say, "Not a chance, put it back." He sighed as the book he'd just 'stolen' floated back to the shelf. He scowled as he checked his inventory and realized that his 'stolen' book was also gone. 'Great.'

He carefully 'stole' another book and smiled when he got a saw the popup notice that his pickpocketing skill had just increased. He touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

'Okay, let's see if I can get any special abilities for maximizing my pickpocketing skill.' He wasn't sure he'd get anything particularly useful for maxing out his pickpocket skill but it was worth a couple of hours to find out.

0o0o0

"Pickpocketing increased by 1. Stealth increased by 1."

Harry stuck the book he'd just 'pickpocketed' into his inventory then touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry glanced at his book tab. He'd been saving and reloading the game for the last fifteen minutes trying to build up his collection of magic books. 'Twelve normal books and four magic books. Great, at this rate I'll go crazy before I empty half the shelves…' He blinked as he realized that he was probably looking at things the wrong way, all he needed to do was put the books somewhere they couldn't be recalled. He switched tabs then focused on his wizard keys and pushed magic through them.

He blinked as the squeaky toy he'd tossed before he left dropped the last foot and hit the ground. He'd forgotten he'd done that to test how time worked in the 'timeless' space. "That could be useful." He carefully set the four magic books and eleven of the normal books on the floor, leaving a rather small and boring looking book on flobberworms in his inventory then pushed magic into his keys and reappeared in the living room. 'Let's see if this works." He walked over and tried to pickpocket one of the books, purposely making noise so Tonks would catch him.

"Not a chance shrimp, put it back," the young girl teased him, her smile growing as large as an adults on her small face, looking somewhat creepy which seemed to be her aim.

He smiled as the shelves rearranged themselves leaving fifteen open spots on the shelf. 'Okay, let's see if that worked.'

Harry pushed magic into his wizard keys and reappeared in his storage vault. He broke into a smile when he saw the stack of books on the ground. 'This should make things easier.' He glanced at the portal machine. "I'm going to loot the shelves then I'm going to come back and kill the monsters one way or another." He pushed magic into his keys and appeared back in the living room.

He saved his game after looting his first three books then again after he got two more normal books and a magic book. He jumped to the vault and unloaded his books then jumped back to the living room and went back to grinding his skill. By the time he looted the entire shelf he was getting a touch bored with jumping back and forth but he'd managed to empty the shelves so he was calling it a win. 'Okay, time to see if I can cheat my way to a victory in Diggle Hell.' He activated his keys then walked over to the machine and entered a random code and hit enter. He smiled as he looked at the red and black portal. He touched his nose. "Save game."

The ethereal voice said, "Game saved."

Harry tried to equip his father's cloak.

"This magic item requires a taller user," the ethereal voice replied almost smugly.

Harry scowled as he was fairly sure the ethereal voice was amused at his annoyance. "Fine, that just means I need to get taller." He looked inventory for any potions that would help him get taller, sadly none of the potions he'd swiped helped with that. "Okay, how would the twins deal with this? By being sneaky and thinking outside the box. If I can't make myself taller and I don't want to destroy my cloak or damage it with a shrinking potion, I'm going to need help."

Harry jumped back to the living room then walked over to the platter and picked up one of the sandwiches. He stuck it in his inventory and looked at it. 'Mum's sandwiches completely restore health and mana, at least during the tutorial. Go Mum!' He picked up another sandwich and pouted as it vanished and reappeared on the platter.

Tonks absently said, "No reason to hoard food, eat the one you have first." without looking away from the television.

'Okay, that's annoying.' He waited a few moments then pickpocketed another sandwich and put it in his inventory with a smile when Tonks failed to react. He touched his nose and said, "Save game."

"Game saved."

He 'stole' the rest of the sandwiches then saved his game and walked over to the couch and grabbed her pants with his hand. "Mine."

Tonks shook her head. "Nope, they're my pants."

"Tonks mine." He focused on his wizarding keys and pushed magic into them.

Tonks jumped in shock as she found herself in a strange stone vault with a glowing red sheet of light in an arch next to a strange device. "What is going on?"

Harry pointed at the portal. "Monsters."

Tonk stared at the strange portal as she asked nervously. "What do you mean monsters?"

He pulled a copy of his father's invisibility cloak out of his inventory and handed it to her. "Ride."

Tonks shivered as she looked around unsuccessfully for an exit. "How did we end up here?"

Harry smiled as innocently as he could, "A'venture?"

Tonks gulped. "Maybe we'll be rescued."

"Nope, a'venture," Harry replied even though part of him really wanted to explain about time traveling and being stuck in a game. He was hoping that after going on an adventure in Diggle Hell she'd be more likely to believe him when he tried to explain with his limited vocabulary.

Tonks sighed as she picked Harry up and put him on her shoulders. She put James's invisibility cloak over Harry and her. "Put the hood up. I wish I had a wand."

Harry grinned as he reached into his inventory and pulled out Sirius's wand and handed it to her.

"You're not supposed to steal wands, Harry. Scratch that, where were you even keeping the cloak and the wand?"

"Magic! Padfoot!"

"Great… okay, let's see what is through the strange red portal, I'm going to kick Sirius when we get out of here."

"Padfoot!" Harry giggled. Normally he would have been embarrassed about giggling but he was fifteen months old, it was probably allowed.

"Be very quiet, we're hunting monsters," Tonks replied with nervous amusement. Her amusement vanished as she stepped out of the portal with Harry and saw a small army of drill faced penguin-like creatures of various colors. She whispered, "I need you to be very, very quiet, Harry."

An: The wizarding keys are largely from the Dungeons of Dreadmore game...


	3. Chapter 3

Harry was just glad that his father's cloak kept the monsters from noticing them. He whispered, "Sneaky."

Tonks did the best she could to sneak by the monstrous penguins, sadly she managed to make noise as she was passing the last penguin which screamed, "Intruders!"

Harry raised his hands and sent a ball of fire at the Diggle.

Tonks stared as the small creature screamed and caught fire running in circles to no effect. "How the hell?!"

"Run!" Harry replied in a harsh whisper.

Tonks ran for the hopefully empty hallway in front of her, she ran across the wooden bridge then turned and pointed her wand at the monster following them and sent sparks at it, since that was all she could reliably do, other than a few household spells she'd learned to avoid cleaning her room.

Harry sent another ball of fire at the creature then smiled as the creature died and left behind a strange rune engraved metal cube.

"Level increased by 1. Tonks' level increased by 1."

Tonks held still as several monsters walked out of the first room and glanced around. Thankfully after several seconds of looking at the dead Diggle they turned around and walked back into the first room. She waited until they'd been gone for a few seconds before she whispered, "That was close."

"Too close," Harry replied with a whisper then summoned the metal cube. He put the cube in his inventory and looked at it. "Heraldic Lutefisk Cube, turns anything placed inside of it to lutefisk."

Tonks frowned slightly as yet another object vanished or appeared around Harry. "You're going to have to show me your magic pocket trick at some point."

"Talent," he said cheerfully, happy both their vocabularies seemed to be less limited in Diggle Hell, possibly because it wasn't the 'real' world or possibly because she seemed to be part of his party now.

"Can you blast the rest of the monsters with your fireballs?" Tonks wasn't sure what was going on but Harry's fireballs were doing more damage than 'her' wand.

"Yes."

"Okay, we're going to try to find a way out without getting killed," Tonks replied in a whisper as they made their way down the hallway into the next room.

Harry charged his fireball then tossed it at a small Diggle that was sleeping on his feet. He didn't really feel all that guilty about it considering what had happened the first time he'd come to Diggle Hell. The fireball set the Diggle on fire and dropped its health by half. He followed the first fireball with two smaller fireballs which finished the creature off. "Bad monster."

Tonks frowned slightly at the small pile of gold coins that dropped off the monster. "Gold?" She carefully walked over and picked up the coins and looked them over. "Cool. Hopefully we can find the exit soon."

Fifteen minutes of dodging patrols, killing single small monsters and looting chests later and they'd made it to a glowing red portal. Tonks asked, "Is that the exit? Never mind, you're a toddler."

Harry reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry spoke up, "Yeah, that's the exit and I'm not exactly a toddler though I am Harry James Potter." He was briefly surprised that the limitations on his speech were gone, but figured that may have something to do with his level as Tonks' vocabulary had also expanded as her level increased.

"What do you mean, Harry?" Tonks asked nervously as she thought about the fact that Harry had just used a complete sentence that consisted of more than just a few simple words.

"I got sent back in time and stuck as my younger self," he explained.

Tonks considered everything Harry had said and done as well as the vault and the portal machine and decided that it made more sense than someone choosing to use some type of magic to turn them into a fifteen month old wizard that could toss balls of fire. "You're in so much trouble when we get out of here. Do you know where we are?"

"Diggle Hell, the portal will take us back to the vault and from there I have magic keys to get us back to the living room."

"In that case, why are we just sitting here?" Tonks asked warily.

"Because time is frozen for the outside world while we're in here and the monsters drop gold coins and the occasional magic item when we kill them. Just think of the fun we could have with a vault filled with gold," he encouraged her.

"What if we get hurt?" she asked nervously, giving him a nervous squeeze.

"I know how to make a time loop, if we get hurt badly enough I can just reset the loop or we can use Mum's healing sandwiches to fix everything up."

Tonks sighed. "That's not how sandwiches work, Harry."

"I don't know what type of potions she put in the sandwiches, you're a witch, she's a witch, we're magic users," he pointed out with a childish grin.

"I guess we can keep ambushing the monsters for a bit," Tonks replied warily.

"Thanks Nym." He was wasn't sure what he was hoping to find but the experience and loot was nothing to sneeze at. "After we take out a couple more Diggles, I'll look through the books I grabbed from the library and we'll see if you can learn a couple of attack spells."

"Being able to defend myself would be good. Let's go."

Harry reached up and tapped his nose as he really didn't want to have this conversation a second time. "Save game."

"Game saved."

0o0o0

Tonks felt like kissing the floor of the vault after stepping out of the exit portal, but decided not to as she noticed how dirty it was. It was even dirtier than her room got the week her mom went to that conference and her dad didn't know her chore schedule. "Now what?"

Harry grinned as he put the invisibility cloak back in his inventory then floated off her shoulders. "I want to run a different version of the Diggle maze but first I want to check on something." He reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry pushed magic into his wizard keys and blinked as he found himself back in the living room with Tonks sitting on the couch watching cartoons, a filled bookshelf and a filled platter of sandwiches. 'Huh, the shelves reset as well.' His gaze jumped to the cupboard under the stairs then he flew toward it and yanked it open then stared in shock at the glowing star. 'But I already grabbed it… that means that completing Diggle Hell must reset things!' He smiled brightly as he reached out and grabbed the star.

Harry used the star on improving his dueling ability. "Tonks?"

Tonks rolled her eyes. "Pick out a book Harry and I'll read you a story."

Harry sighed as he realized that she didn't remember their adventure. "Rats…" He took a breath then let it out. 'Great, I've got to explain this all over again. Oh well, at least I get a star out of the deal.' He flew over to the bookshelf and started pickpocketing books.

After the sixth book he saved the game again then used magic and jumped into his vault using his keys. He blinked as he saw Tonks standing where he'd left her. "Tonks?"

"What did you need to check?" Tonks asked curiously.

"Some books." Harry pulled the six books out of his inventory then stacked them with the others. 'Okay, does this mean I there are two Tonks? That would be so cool!'

"Well, get to it."

Harry pushed magic through his keys and reappeared in the living room. He smiled as he worked on pickpocketing the rest of the books, watching Tonks out of the corner of his eye.

0o0o0

"Pickpocket Skill increased by one. Stealing equipped items, unlocked."

Harry grinned as he reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry looked at the empty bookshelf with a smile. 'That was easier than I thought it would be.' He snuck around the couch and floated up so that he could reach the back of Tonks' head. He reached out and smiled as a window appeared with Tonks' equipped items as well as loose change in her pockets. He grabbed her socks and pulled them to his inventory.

"Pickpocketing failure."

Tonks frowned as she turned and mock glared at Harry. "Hey, Rugrat, it's October, I need those."

"Sorry." He tried a couple more times, thankfully to the same general sort of amused response. He grinned and saved the game as the sixth attempt resulted in him 'stealing' her socks. Sadly, she 'stole' them back after the next failed attempt. He loaded the game then jumped to the vault and dropped the socks on the ground. He glanced at Tonks' feet, 'Yep, she still has her socks and her boots on.' He channeled magic and returned to the living room and worked on stealing her clothes bit by bit.

Thirty minutes and a few trips to the vault later and he had all of her clothes other than her panties. He reached out and pickpocketed the sandwiches again as they'd come in useful on their first Diggle Hell run, when an area of effect spell had nearly killed Tonks and seriously injured him. 'If I grab her I might end up with two Nymphadoras... I can live with that.' He set his hand on her knee and pushed magic into his wizard keys.

Tonks blinked as Harry appeared with a nearly naked version of her. "Harry!"

The nearly naked Nymphadora looked around in shock. "What's going on?!"

Tonks sighed. "Harry is actually from the future, he got sent back into his younger self and we're monster hunting."

Nymphadora looked at Harry then the girl that looked like her. "Why do you look like me and where are we?"

"Feel free to get her up to speed, I'm going to try to find some spells we can use." Harry walked over to the pile of magic books and started reading through them looking for spells that he should know. Thankfully unlocking spells was as easy as reading the name and incantation, if he'd known the spells before he'd found out he was a game character. He figured he'd give the girls twenty or thirty minutes to sort things out then the other Tonks could take his second invisibility cloak and they could work their way through a Diggle Hell dungeon so they could reset the room and pick up an additional star.

0o0o0o0

Harry grinned as he raised his hand and called forth a firestorm on the large group of Diggles in the area. "Die, Diggle scum!"

One of the six Nymphadora's they had in the party giggled as she ducked out from under the second invisibility cloak and hurried over to collect the gold and magical items the monsters had dropped. "How many times are we going to finish this run?"

He was fairly sure that if he ever ran into his world's Tonks she'd strangle him for causing her copies personality quirks. Apparently stealing clothes off Tonks meant that whatever she was wearing when she was pulled out of the tutorial was 'normal' for her or at least more normal than it probably should have been considering he'd gotten a bit carried away with stealing clothes and few made it down with anything on them. He wasn't sure what was going to happen to the copies when the tutorial ended but he was sort of hoping to have a couple Nymphadoras running around half naked when they grew up. Yes, it was perverted, but after the bus killed him he figured he'd earned the right to be a little perverted!

"How many sisters do you want?" he asked the original Tonks, which he could tell from the others as she wore the most clothes out of the group, because while she managed to convince the others to put on some clothes for protection they tried to get away with as little as possible.

The original Tonks replied, "How many more stars do you need?"

"At least a couple more to finish out everything including the ability to pick up a magical Animagus form and a couple of defensive abilities. I can stop bringing more Nymphadoras in here if you like, though I wouldn't mind a few more," Harry admitted. "Want me to stop bringing in more of you?"

"Nope, just asking." Tonks figured she was already going to be grounded for the foreseeable future for taking Harry into Diggle Hell, she might as well have as many people as possible to spread her punishment around with.

One of the other Nymphadoras said, "If we end up with twelve we can be the dirty dozen."

A different Nymphadora said, "We're already way short on wands and we wouldn't have enough space under the cloaks."

Harry smiled as the Nymphadora that had been looting walked over and handed him her bag of treasures then slipped back under the cloak. "Thanks. Nothing says we can't leave a couple of Nymphs in the vault. They'll either be frozen in time or they can read some of the magic books, maybe straighten up a bit."

The original Nymphadora replied, "I guess that works."

"In that case, let's shoot for an even dozen, maybe I'll find the perfect book I'm supposed to give your alternate one of these resets."

Another Nymphadora said, "Your favorite book was about a shape changing dragon girl, I put it on the floor by the bookcase so it wouldn't get lost and you could reach it."

"I'll take a look once we get back." Harry was just glad they could farm gold along with the magical items, because raising over a dozen girls was going to be expensive. "Next room." He smiled as they headed toward the next room. He figured a dozen extra Tonks was a worthy goal and it's not like anything bad could come of it.

0o0o0

Error! Error! Error!

Harry blinked as things seemed to hit fast forward, there was a bunch of cutscenes ending with Sirius and Tonks leaving, then a nap. He 'woke' up to screaming coming from downstairs. "Crap!"

Lily hugged him. "It will be okay…" she lied.

The ethereal voice sounded slightly annoyed, "Error! Giant blood maxed. James Potter is not allowed to rip Voldemort's heart out. Server resetting in five minutes."

"Lily! He's down! Grab the bug out bags and let's… bug out!" James shouted trying to look everywhere at once, knowing Voldemort rarely fought anyone without a dozen Death Eaters on hand to witness his triumph.

Harry scowled as he was rushed through the house, his parents grabbing a bag each. He quickly used the perk points he'd gotten from leveling to increase his wandless magic skills and defense skills then grabbed both bags and stuffed them in his inventory and saved the game.

"Game saved."

The world blinked and he found himself back in the black void. "What the hell was that?!"

"Save data corrupted, extracting all available information and compensating. Tutorial is completed, have a good day."

Harry blinked as he found himself back in a ruined house with Sirius looking down at him with a heartbroken look on his face. "I'm sorry, Harry."

"What the fuck happened?!" Harry demanded as he looked at the body of his mother angry that he couldn't save her.

Sirius blinked and almost dropped Harry. "What?"

"Oh… I said that out loud didn't I?" Harry said scrunching up his nose and calming down as he remembered that he had saved his mom at least once and had her in his inventory.

"Yes… who the hell are you?" Sirius demanded holding him out at arm's length as if he were a poisonous viper.

"Harry James Potter, I'm from the future," Harry replied seriously.

Sirius snorted. "That's not possible, but then neither is using polyjuice on someone more than a third greater or smaller than your own body weight." He shook his head trying to figure out what was real and praying this was just a bad dream.

"Neither's magic. If I had my way I'd be an adult me in the past right now. You think I like being stuck in diapers? Oh and by the way, if you run off to kill Pettigrew, I'm going to be more than a little annoyed," Harry said with a childish glare that just made him look cute.

"But he betrayed your parents!" Sirius complained absently as he glanced around the room looking for something out of place that would show he was dreaming.

"And we can track him down and kill him after we sort things out. Speaking of sorting things out, I need you to set me down so I can pull some people out of my inventory," Harry replied, wiggling in his grasp.

Sirius blinked. "People, inventory… what are you talking about?" he asked confused.

"Just put me down, you're obviously a fully qualified wizard and I'm stuck in the body of a toddler, cut me a break here." He smacked his pudgy little hands against Sirius' arms to no effect.

Sirius reluctantly set him down. "Fine, but no funny business."

"I managed to get everyone while time was stuttering," Harry hedged. "Here's Dad, he's just stunned and under the effects of a shrinking potion." Harry reached into his inventory and pulled his unconscious father out and set him on the floor. "There. Let me grab the rest." He pulled his mother out then the other Sirius. "Believe me now?"

Sirius stared at the shrunken and hopefully unconscious bodies of his best friends and someone that looked suspiciously like him a quick wave of his wand verifying their identity. "What the hell is going on?" He asked, almost positive he couldn't even dream up something this weird.

"It's a long story and we don't have time to go into it right now," Harry said seriously.

"Make time," James Potter said from the doorway, soot covering one sleeve of his shirt and half his face looking like a giant bruise.

Sirius blinked between James and the unconscious 'James' on the ground. "I'm a little lost here and getting more lost by the second."

"Someone screwed with time and then… I kinda abused that fact," Harry admitted.

"What did you do with my son?!" James demanded suspiciously.

"I am your son, someone threw me sixteen years or so into the past. I'm not all that amused about it either. Do you honestly think I want to be wearing diapers?" he repeated, wishing he'd had a chance to dose everyone with calming potions before explaining everything or that he'd managed to wandlessly learn the cheering charm.

Sirius shrugged. "They're magical, they vanish the waste."

"Padfoot, you think that's the point? Just in case something happens and I forget everything, Alice and Frank Longbottom need to leave the fidelius charm up for at least a month, Crouch Jr, Bellatrix, her husband and his brother go on a torture spree, the Longbottoms end up pretty much brain dead because of the pain curse. Oh and Pandora Lovegood needs to be told to get better safety measures for spell research, she dies when her daughter is nine because of an experiment."

"Any other things you shouldn't say because of the danger of screwing up the timeline?" James asked dryly.

"Snape is the one that told Voldemort the prophecy and I hate the Dursleys," Harry replied.

James scowled at the mention of Snape then blinked a couple of times as the rest of Harry's statement sunk in. "How do you even know that name?"

"I had sixteen years with them."

James snorted. "Now I know you're lying, that shouldn't be possible, they're below a muggle orphanage in Siberia on the list of people who should get you."

"Blame Dumbledore and by extension the death eaters. He decided that casting blood wards and sticking me with Petunia was better than sending me across the ocean or pretty much anywhere," Harry complained.

"Why the hell would he do that?" James asked in disbelief, even though he was slowly beginning to accept the fact that Harry might be telling the truth, simply because no one who knew everything he seemed to would bother making up such a ridiculous story.

"Because Voldemort disembodied himself when he bounced a killing curse off my forehead and people credited me for his defeat, both good and bad. I really don't get it, if anything it was something Mum figured out with some charm or something," Harry complained. "All I know is that I spent most of my life with a target on my back for my 'defeat' of him and a lightning bolt shaped scar from the killing curse on my forehead."

James glanced at Harry's thankfully scar free forehead. "Okay, this is obviously a clusterfuck. Sirius, head to the lab and grab some truth potion."

"You're not going to feed it to Harry are you?" Sirius asked in disbelief; those types of potions were dangerous for children after all.

"No, I was thinking about feeding it to the Sirius look-alike first," James replied reasonably as he looked down at the three slowly growing bodies, his eyes avoiding looking at the fallen form of his wife just a few feet away.

Lily sat up, "As long as it's not me, grab a headache potion while you're at it."

Sirius stared at Lily in shock. "How are you alive?" he asked in wonder.

"Hell if I know," Lily muttered, rubbing the left side of her chest, directly over her heart.

Harry smiled happily, if saving his parents had been his goal, he'd overshot the mark a bit. "I'll be happy to go over this later, but can we unshrink and revive the rest of the people and get the place secured first? Peter sold us out, and I'd rather not be here if there is somewhere else we can hide while we sort things out."

James shrugged and covertly wiped his eyes while pretending to clean his glasses, but unable to hide his relief at seeing his Lily alive and well. "Yeah, let me grab a couple of things, then we can blow the place up and say Voldemort obviously killed himself on the wards while we were on vacation, no story there."

Lily raised her eyebrows as she looked down her nose at him. "You're going to pack up all of my books first, right?"

"Of course," James replied promptly.

Harry reached into his inventory and pulled out one of his two invisibility cloaks and handed it to Sirius. "Here, this way you can sneak around."

Sirius leaned down and accepted the cloak before examining it. "Did you get this from James' closet?"

"In the other timeline," he agreed. "Dad's cloak should still be in his closet here too," Harry explained.

James snorted still unable to believe what had happened, but willing to go along with anything that kept his family intact. "Right, I'll check that."

Lily blinked as she finally noticed the other much smaller, though not younger, Lily. "What happened?"

"Shrinking potion and a stunner, I might be grounded for a bit… but it was for a good cause…" Harry trailed off unsure of how to explain things so they sounded less insane than they were.

"What was the good cause?" Lily asked.

"Saving you and Dad from Voldemort and Sirius from prison," Harry replied, deciding not to bother as there was no way what he was going to say would sound remotely credible no matter how he framed it.

"Prison?" Sirius asked warily.

"Yeah, that little trick with hiding the secret keeper meant that when Peter got the best of Sirius in a duel, no one knew that Sirius wasn't the secret keeper and he was tossed into prison without a trial," Harry explained.

"Wait, Peter beat me in a duel?" Sirius asked incredulously.

Lily looked at Sirius in disbelief. "Out of everything that's happened tonight, that's what you're objecting to?"

Sirius snorted again. "Yeah, it's the least believable thing he's said tonight!"

Harry snorted right back at him. "By duel I meant he hit a gas line and blew up a street. I'm fairly sure you had head trauma when the aurors showed up and found you laughing about him getting the best of you."

"That's more believable," Sirius admitted.

Hagrid called out from downstairs, "Hello!"

Harry whispered, "Someone should keep him from seeing the duplicates." He glanced down at his extra set of parents who were slowly expanding as the potion wore off.

"James will take care of it," Sirius said before he turned to Lily. "Are you going to be alright? You're looking a little shocky."

Lily ignored the question and looked at Harry. "So, you're my son?" she asked cautiously recalling giving him a bath and getting him to eat his peas earlier that day.

"I'm Harry James Potter and I'm seventeen and yeah, this is a confusing mess," he admitted.

"Busy!" James called out from somewhere downstairs. "Talk to Sirius."

Sirius snorted. "That's putting it mildly." He raised his voice, "I'll be right down, Hagrid. The second floor is unstable. I don't think it will take your weight!"

"Is Harry alright?" Hagrid called out.

"He's fine!" Sirius replied loudly as he headed down to talk to Hagrid.

Lily enervated her slowly expanding doppelganger. "Lily?"

The second Lily slowly woke up. "Why am I looking at another me? James, I told you a little polyjuice play is fine, but I am not making out with my twin, I am not that narcissistic."

"It's a long story and I don't have all the details, but it seems to prove our theory of time cloning and paradox avoidance," Lily told her. "We don't have time to go into that right now though."

The slowly growing redhead turned to Harry. "You better have a very good explanation, I remember you stunning me, which should have been impossible."

"I do, it's all uncle Padfoot's fault," Harry replied with amusement as he pointed at the unconscious Sirius.

Lily raised an eyebrow. "How is it his fault?"

"Well, you see… uh? Would you believe that he gave me a time turner?" Harry asked hopefully.

"No," the pair of mothers chorused.

"Does that mean I'm grounded?" Harry asked with a wince, trying to distract them.

"For at least a couple of months, maybe years, depending. So… can you explain the flying bit?" Lily asked hopefully as Harry floated a couple of inches off the ground and considered hiding.

"Do I get a shorter sentence?" Harry asked hopefully.

Lily sighed. "It's not jail, Harry."

"In that case, it's magic," he replied happily.

Lily looked at the other Lily. "Maybe it should be more like jail."

"Mum!" Harry grinned. "Okay, fine, it's a magic trick. I can show you later... maybe."

The still slightly smaller Lily asked, "What happens if he falls?"

"Nothing, I'm sort of immune to falling damage," he replied honestly.

"Immune to falling damage? Did you test that, inadvertently?" she asked wide eyed.

"Let's go with that…" Harry trailed off as James walked back in.

"I found my cloak which means that Harry had an exact duplicate," he said, shaking his head in wonder.

"I told you that. Now that Hagrid's showed up, do we have a plan to avoid me getting blamed for killing Voldemort?" he asked hopefully.

James shrugged. "Sure, we just tell him that the damage was a result of a duel and we drove him off, easy enough."

"I'll go talk to him then we can go somewhere safer." Lily stood up, shook her head and then headed out of the room.

Harry touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Harry smiled as he realized that having a save game for a magical power was going to be rather awesome but having his parents back was even better, even if it was going to be rather weird being stuck as a fifteen month toddler for far longer than he really wanted.

0o0o0

Sirius looked up from the book he was reading as Lily stalked into the wizarding tent they were staying in until things got sorted out. "What's the matter?"

Lily snorted. "Harry was right, most of the death eaters are already trying to bribe their way out of prison."

"Right, business as usual." Sirius hadn't had all that much faith in the wizarding world's ability to deal with the corruption even before listening to Harry's stories about the future.

"How can you be so calm about this?" Lily demanded.

"I grew up in a family of dark wizards. If they wanted something done they normally bribed or blackmailed people until it was done. None of this is exactly new, the Death Eaters that have money will bribe their way out of prison as long as there isn't any solid evidence that can't be washed under the rug with the imperious defense and the people without money will get sent away to prove that the ministry is 'doing' something."

"That's insane and unacceptable, we have truth potions, magical vows and pensieves," she complained.

"Pensieve memories can be faked, not well but they can be. Truth potions can be resisted with the right potions or enough training and none of the wizengamot want to open the door to magical vows being used in criminal trials as they don't want to have to face the same."

Lily ranted, "They're marked death eaters! Why not just dose them with truth potion, maybe some of them get away with it but that's better than letting everyone get away with it!"

Sirius shook his head. "It's not going to happen Lily. A decent percentage of the court agrees with the death eater's on the 'value' of purebloods."

"That's crazy."

Sirius shrugged. "Welcome to the British wizarding world."

"How do we fix this?" Lily asked.

Harry walked in from the other room where he'd been reading. "Easy, we make sure that Barty Crouch Jr. doesn't get arrested."

Lily spun and looked at Harry. "How does that fix it?"

"Barty Crouch lost a lot of political capital when his son was outed as a death eater. If that hadn't happened then he would probably have made Minister of magic."

Sirius snorted. "I'd rather not have him as the next Minister of Magic, he's a sadistic bastard."

Lily snapped, "Language!"

Harry snorted. "I've heard worse Mum."

"Right, sorry, I'm still trying to wrap my head about the fact that you're an adult mentally."

Harry floated up and then over to the couch. "I'm still trying to adjust to being a toddler again. I don't want Mr. Crouch for minister either, but we have years to make sure he doesn't have the political capital to stay in office after he deals with the death eaters."

Sirius said, "That shouldn't be too hard considering some of the crap he's already pulled."

Harry looked over at his mother or at least one of them. "All we really need right now is someone that will tighten the thumbscrews on the captured death eaters and make sure none of them buy their way out of prison. If his son were to die to death eaters then he'd push that much harder."

Lily looked down her nose at Harry. "You better not be suggesting that we kill him."

"Of course not, we don't need to kill him, just kidnap him and fake his death at death eater hands, toss up the dark mark and Bob's your uncle."

"And where would we keep him?" she asked.

"We could always transfigure him into an animal or an object. We don't need to hold him forever, just a couple of months or years." Harry didn't really care if they turned him into a rock and tossed him in the ocean, but he was trying not to come off as a callous killer right now.

Sirius would have to talk the idea over with his alternate, James, and the other James but they could probably pull it off if they watched Frank's house. "We'd have to discuss the idea with Frank but I don't think we'll have a problem convincing him to help."

Lily muttered, "This would be easier if they didn't have the money to bribe their way out of prison."

Harry opened his mouth to say, 'Good luck with that.' then closed it as he realized that he had a save game ability and the ability to fly, robbing Gringotts wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility and he had a decent magical traps skill thanks to his many trips to Diggle Hell during the tutorial and a dozen cheerful pink haired accomplices. "That would be nice."

Lily sighed. "Can you keep track of Harry for a bit while I get some sleep?"

"You know I'm an adult, right?" Harry asked curiously.

"You're also fifteen months old Harry," she reminded him again, as they had been doing every couples of hours or so.

Sirius laughed at the look on Harry's face. "We'll explore the forest, it should be fine."

"Thanks, I need to grab some sleep," Lily admitted.

Sirius looked at Harry. "Let's go so that your Mum can get her beauty sleep."

Lily muttered, "Thanks." as she walked into the other room to get some sleep.

"Sleep well." Harry headed out of the wizarding tent and looked around the forest where they were camped.

Sirius walked out of the tent. "What's the plan?"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked innocently as he touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

Sirius laughed. "You have the same look on your face your father gets whenever he's planning a prank, so spill."

"Mum has a point about the Death Eaters having money. If they were poor, it would be a lot easier to convict them."

"That would require robbing Gringotts," Sirius pointed out.

"It's not like I haven't done it before," Harry replied as he floated on his back at waist height. He was a bit concerned he was going to end up resembling Dudley with how much he prefered flying to walking and made a mental note to spend more time actually getting some physical exercise.

Sirius shook his head. "Goblins are rather nasty and vengeful, Harry. The last time around you had help and still had to escape on the back of a dragon. You might be an adult mentally but physically you're a toddler."

"I also have the blood of giants running through my veins, dragon magic, and I can also fly and set up a time loop so that I can keep trying until I get it right," Harry replied.

Sirius stared at Harry. "Assuming that you're not lying through your teeth we need to hit a casino at some point. You can be my good luck charm."

"Does that mean you're onboard with robbing Gringotts?" Harry asked hopefully.

Sirius glanced back at the tent then looked back at Harry. "Three conditions, I want at least a five hour head start if decide to tell your mother about the bank robbery so that I can flee the country, you only steal from dark wizards or witches, and I'm going to need you to prove your ability works."

Harry laughed at Sirius. "I'm not crazy Sirius, I don't need to be grounded for life for scaring her. As for proof, would calling a coin ten times in a row work?"

"That's a good start," Sirius admitted.

"Grab a coin then we can start planning."


	4. Chapter 4

Sirius grinned as Harry guessed the correct face of the coin for the twentieth time in a row including the time he'd swapped the coin out for a double sided coin without telling him and the time he'd swapped the coin for a different coin in case Harry had somehow charmed it. "We're going to a casino at some point."

Harry glanced over at the tent where one of his mothers was napping. "I'm game if you can get me some polyjuice and figure out a way to do it that doesn't have my mums breathing fire."

Sirius frowned as he pictured Lily's reaction to taking Harry to a casino. "Point, maybe later. Do you have a plan for getting into Bella's vault? Last time you said that was where everything went downhill."

"I've got a couple of ideas but they're not exactly what most people would call sane," Harry admitted.

Sirius laughed. "Sanity is overrated. Let's hear your ideas."

"I have three invisibility potions, I'm not opposed to using one of them to get past the goblins so I can simply fly down to Bellatrix's vault."

Sirius shook his head. "Let's ignore the fact that you have three potions that shouldn't exist for a minute, you'd still need a goblin to open her vault."

Harry smirked. "Can the wards tell the difference between a conscious goblin and an unconscious goblin?"

"I'm not sure, it's worth testing considering you can reset things. Where did you get the invisibility potions?"

"Would you believe me if I said I found them in Mum's potion lab during the tutorial?" Harry asked hopefully.

Sirius snorted. "Maybe if you weren't smirking, spill."

"I'll tell you the rest of the story once I get back from robbing Bellatrix's vault." Harry wanted Voldemort dead and gone before he told Sirius about the vault, his extra cousins and Diggle Hell.

"Lily is going to blow her top when she realizes I let you run off to rob Gringotts, no matter how we try to spin it."

Harry grinned. "Don't worry, I'll have a time loop running, if I have to reset it so we can escape her wrath, I will."

"In that case what do you need help with?" Sirius said relieved.

"I'm not terribly sure how goblins or wizards solve crimes other than not well in the case of wizards."

"The goblins aren't much better than wizards. As long as you don't leave hairs behind, walk in there with a registered wand or get seen, you should be okay."

"In other words, I should grab a cloak and a mask?" Harry asked curiously.

"That would certainly help," Sirius admitted.

Harry opened his inventory and looked through the clothes tab until he found an ugly green cloak that he could do without and a pair of faded 'red' pajama bottoms that also covered his feet. He pulled them out of his inventory and tossed them to Sirius. "Here."

Sirius smirked as he caught the clothes. "Pink?"

Harry glared at Sirius as he stated firmly, "They are red."

"If you say so," Sirius replied with good natured mocking.

"Can you charm them so that I'll be invisible while wearing them?" Harry asked hopefully.

Sirius shrugged. "Disillusion maybe. It won't last more than a couple of days and it won't be invisibility but if you stick to the shadows, you should be able to make it work."

"That's fine, I shouldn't need it more than a couple of hours," Harry said, figuring he could simply stick to the ceiling as no one ever looked up.

"Or we could just wait until we capture Bellatrix and use polyjuice."

Harry shook his head. "I also want to try and steal any goblin spell books that I can get my hands on."

Sirius winced. "That could start a war."

Harry smirked. "Only if they remember it. Griphook tried to kill Hermione, Ron and I by trapping us in a vault the last time around, after we made a deal to get access so that we could destroy Voldemort's horcrux. I don't have any loyalty to the nasty little bastards."

"This is going to end in blood and tears," Sirius muttered.

Harry shrugged. "Hopefully for the Death Eaters when they realize they can't buy their way out of prison."

Sirius pulled his wand out of his holster and charmed the pajama bottoms and the cloak to disillusion Harry while he was wearing them. He doubted they'd last more than a couple of days and that was mainly because of their small size, but that should be enough time for Harry to test the bank's defenses.

Harry equipped the charmed clothes then grabbed a pair of gloves and a cloth mask out of his inventory and handed them to Sirius. "Here."

Sirius charmed the mask and gloves then handed it to Harry. "I'll also hit you with a silencing charm before I drop you off, just to make sure you're covered."

"Thanks." Harry put the mask and gloves on then touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

"The time loop is set."

Sirius pulled his hood up. "Let's head to Diagon alley before I change my mind."

Harry held out his hand. "Whenever you're ready."

Sirius grabbed his hand and side along apparated to Diagon Alley with him. He glanced around to make sure no one was paying all that much attention then whispered when he didn't notice anyone paying them any attention, "Have fun, I'm going to check on a couple of things, you're resetting this try anyways, right?"

"Yep, why?"

"I wanted to pay Borgin a visit. He has a couple of books that I wouldn't mind taking a look at that I'd rather no one actually remember me buying."

"You do know that you'll forget everything, right?" Harry asked in a whisper.

Sirius smirked. "Of course but, you won't. If I find something useful you can memorize the page and we'll pick it up later while in disguise or copy the spell down with a pensieve."

"Worth a shot," Harry agreed in a whisper.

"Best of luck." Sirius turned and headed for Knockturn alley.

Harry flew down the street toward Gringotts. He hovered a couple of feet off the ground as he watched people enter and exit the bank for a minute or two then flew into the bank when a witch opened the door to leave. He quickly flew over to the counter and around the back to make sure that he wasn't seen. He was actually a bit surprised when he didn't hear any shouts or sirens. He waited twenty seconds then flew behind the various goblins and into the passage that led to the tunnels. 'That went better than I was expecting.'

Despite or maybe because of what happened the last time he'd snuck into Gringotts he was half expecting to have things jump out and try to eat him as he flew toward where he remembered Bellatrix's vault was located. Thankfully sneaking past the dragon only required flying fast enough that the dragon couldn't track him by scent quickly enough to roast him with its fire breath. He grinned as he spotted a goblin opening a vault while a grumpy looking wizard waited impatiently.

The wizard grumbled, "Out of the way."

The goblin resisted the urge to snarl or stab the stupid wizard as he stepped back so the wizard could get into his vault.

Harry blinked as he caught sight of the dark mark on the man's arm when he reached out to grab the side of the vault and his robe bunched up. 'You'd think the idiots would do a better job hiding those.' He hit the wizard with a silent and wandless stunner then did the same with the shocked goblin when he spun around to look at what had sent the spell at the wizard. 'Almost too easy.'

Harry walked into the vault and glanced around at the stacks of gold and silver coins then looked over at a shelf that held various items including several books. He opened his inventory then worked on looting the various treasures in the vault leaving the stacks of gold and silver alone. It wasn't that he didn't want the gold, it was just that he didn't see a point in taking the gold when he was going to load his save game anyways.

Harry grinned as he stole the man's wand and vault key then levitated him the rest of the way into the vault. He walked out of the vault and levitated the goblin up and over to the door. He sighed in relief as he was able to close the vault door by using the goblin's hand on the door. 'And this is supposed to be the most secure place on Earth to store your gold? Bullshit.' He scowled as he levitated the goblin in front of him as he flew toward Bellatrix's vault. 'Smoke and mirrors and more lies. What the hell stops a group of wizards from coming down here with brooms?' He smiled slightly as he remembered one of Hermione's rants about how wizards were idiots. Sure, that particular rant had actually been about Ron but the same applied to wizards in general at least in his experience.

Harry wasn't surprised when he managed to open Bellatrix's vault with the goblin though he was a bit disappointed in their security. 'Seriously, imperio is a thing, confusion charms are a thing… maybe we should just kidnap Hermione and head to America. They can't be this stupid all over the world.'

He floated the goblin inside the vault then flew in to take a look around. He smiled as he saw the cup on the pedestal where he'd found it the last time around. He carefully flew up next to the cup and picked it up then stuffed it in his inventory. 'Yep, creepy dark nasty feeling, one down, several to go.' He glanced around the rest of the vault. 'Hmm, no books, just a bunch of gold and goblin silver art objects.' He reached out and picked one of the chalices up and was rather surprised then it didn't start replicating like mad. 'Huh, she must have upgraded her security system after Voldemort took over the ministry.'

He picked up a couple more items at random and stuffed them in his inventory then stopped as he felt dark magic as he reached for a dagger. 'I should grab some dragonhide gloves for the real attempt.' He left the dagger where it was then cast a silence spell on the vault. He cast Incarcerous on the goblin then pulled one of the truth potions he'd looted from his mother's potion lab out of his inventory and dosed the goblin. He wasn't sure why his mother had truth potion, maybe because of his father's job as an auror or maybe it was because of the tutorial but either way he wasn't going to complain. He hit the goblin with a wandless enervate. "Wake up."

The goblin looked around warily when he found that he was tied up and in a different vault than the one he'd opened. "What do you want?" he demanded as his eyes looked around for his unseen assailant.

"I want to know what the bank does with vaults that don't have owners."

The goblin snorted then replied in a daze. "If we can't find any family we confiscate everything as per our agreement with the ministry."

Harry pulled a notebook and pen out of his inventory. "If you were going to loot the most valuable possession the goblins have or are guarding, what would you loot and where would I find it?"

"A head sized ruby, in the director's personal vault," replied the goblin woodenly as the truth potion forced the truth from him.

Harry wrote the information down as he asked his next question. "Where would I find goblin books on goblin magic?" He only felt slightly guilty as he pumped the goblin for information about magic, ancient goblin treasures, the location of the bank records for the owners of each vault, the contents of various death eater vaults and the art of creating goblin silver of which the goblin knew very little of other than a couple of names of previous long dead goblin smiths which would be helpful as soon as he got the resurrection stone back.

Harry spent over an hour wringing information out of the goblin before he heard an alarm coming from outside despite the muffling charms. "Looks like they finally got curious."

The goblin glared in Harry's general direction. "You'll never get away with this!"

"Oh? Why not?"

The goblin said, "Because they'll capture you!"

"How, I'm invisible and you've never seen my face."

"We record the wand signature of everyone that comes into the bank. We'll find you."

"And the fact that I didn't bring a wand?" Harry asked curiously, hoping the goblin gave something away in his rage at being captured.

"You had to have left something behind." The goblin shouted, "Once we find out who you are we'll kill you and your entire family for discovering what you have!"

"Have the goblins arranged any deaths so they can confiscate a vault?"

"That would be illegal and violate several magical contracts," the goblin snarled as the potion forced him to continue, "a word here or there about another family's vast wealth on the other hand is perfectly acceptable and often accomplishes the same thing."

"Anything else I should know?" Harry smiled as the goblin continued spilling secrets for another twenty minutes until a group of goblin security guards showed up to investigate the open vault.

One of the guards demanded, "What is the meaning of this?"

The truth potion laced goblin shouted, "She's invisible!" assuming it was a female because of Harry's current childlike voice.

Harry used a pedestal as cover as he blasted the goblin guards until they were little more than piles of ash. "That was messy..." He reached down and picked up the goblin he'd been interrogating and stuffed him in his inventory. 'Thank the gods for giant strength.' He smirked as he walked over and grabbed an intact goblin hand which was just about the only thing left of that particular goblin. He flew over to the next vault and used the goblin hand on the vault's door. He stared in shock when the vault door actually opened. 'Seriously? I trusted these morons with my gold...'

Harry shook his head then put the bloody severed hand in his inventory knowing that his inventory would keep it fresh. He pointed his hand at the vault and wandlessly conjured light. His slight frown turned into a smile when he saw the shelf filled with old books. 'I wish Hermione was here.' His smile slid off his face as he remembered that his best friends were gone. 'New life, new friends and I have my parents back… screw it, I'll just have to find her early.'

He had a feeling that Hermione would still end up a bookworm no matter what which was thankfully one of her more adorable traits, he was just hoping that he could grind off some of her rougher edges before she got to Hogwarts. He wasn't sure what to do about Ron as he wasn't even sure that Ron would want to be his friend this time around considering he wasn't the Boy Who Lived, same thing with Ginny really. 'Nothing I can do about it right now.'

Harry pulled his attention back to the vault then summoned the books and stuffed them into his inventory after writing the vault number of the spines of the books. He smiled absently as he pictured Hermione screaming at him for defacing old books, 'At least this way I can keep track of where I found them.'

He turned and flew to the next vault. He pulled the bloody hand out and used it on the vault door then looked inside. 'Gold and silver, nothing special.' He flew to the next door and touched the bloody goblin hand to the door. His first indication that something was wrong was the bloody hand sinking into the door, the next was the wailing siren of doom. He flew backwards as the hand was sucked into the vault. 'Maybe the goblins aren't quite as stupid as I thought. The life must have faded from the hand which set off the alarm. I guess that means I need to find the records department and get the hell out of here.'

He smiled as he headed deeper into the cave to where the dragon was chained up. It wasn't where he needed to be for the records but letting a dragon rampage through Gringotts would certainly give the goblins something else to focus on while he robbed the records room. He blasted the chains on the dragon, threw a ball of fire behind him, and then flew as fast as he could away from the dragon. He wanted to laugh as the dragon charged then roasted a group of goblins that thought they were out of range. 'Best of luck.'

Harry carefully snuck past a goblin guard while floating along the ceiling of a tunnel as he followed the directions he'd been given. He took a couple of lefts then a few rights as he made his way through the maze until he got to the door to the records room. He flew back down the hallway then slipped into the lounge where several goblins were scrambling thanks to the various alarms going off. He quickly blasted them with stunners from both hands then levitated one of the goblins and hauled it back toward the door to the records room. He grinned as he floated down to the ground, lined up his shot and banished the goblin into the door as hard as he could.

The door made a nice clanging sound as the goblin's skull slammed into it. 'That will leave a mark.' Harry summoned the goblin back about five feet then banished the goblin at the door again.

A burly looking goblin opened the door holding a sword and shouted something in gobbledygook.

Harry raised his hand and wandlessly summoned the goblin out of the doorway. He jumped the screaming goblin then twisted and banished him at a group of goblins that had poured into the hallway behind him. He dove for the door that was already closing and tumbled through it. 'That could have been worse.' He focused on the surprised goblin clerk standing in the middle of the room and hit him with a stunner then turned around and used a couple of sticking charms to make sure the goblins wouldn't be opening the door any time soon. He frowned as he looked around the room filled with dozens of old fashioned filing cabinets. 'I'll just have to take them with me.'

He walked over and pushed the goblin clerk into his inventory then hit one of the filing cabinets with a shrinking spell. 'Sweet, they didn't charm it against shrinking it, then again with the curse on the files, it's hardly needed.' He wasn't actually sure what the curse did as the other goblin wasn't aware of the curse's exact nature just that there was one. Still, he wasn't all that worried about it as he planned to interrogate the goblin clerk before he took the shrunken filing cabinets out of his inventory.

He ignored the banging on the door as he went to work shrinking and stealing the filing cabinets so that he could match vaults to his list of death eaters.

A goblin shouted from outside the room, "There is no way out of there!"

Harry finished stashing the last shrunken cabinet in his inventory then glanced up at the vent with a smirk. "You'll never take me alive!" He grinned as he blasted the grate on the vent. It was far to small for most people to navigate but he was a toddler and he could fly. "First goblin that comes in here, I start torching files!"

Harry flew up and into the ventilation system. 'Not my best idea but I should be able to get outside this way.' He was rather surprised with how easy it was to get close to the entrance using the ventilation system. He knew there were charms in place to keep critters out of the air vents near the surface from talking to the goblin but he didn't need to get out that way, just get close enough to the entrance that he could exit the vents into the main chamber. He had to resist the urge to giggle as he flew out of the vents and found that the dragon had already escaped, taking out the section of glass floor in the lobby of the bank and the roof of the bank. He flew up and out of the bank then scanned the crowd looking for Sirius.

0o0o0

Sirius's grin slipped off his face when he walked back into the tent with Harry on his shoulders and saw both Lilys standing there with their wands out and pointed at them. "Something the matter?"

Lily glared at Sirius. "You mean beyond you apparating somewhere with Harry, leaving us to wonder what the hell was going on for the last couple of hours?"

"I blame Harry," Sirius replied quickly.

Harry pouted. "Hey!"

The other Lily said, "You're not helping your case." She looked at Harry, who was barely visible and covered with dust and ash. "Maybe you should explain Harry."

"I set up a time loop then we went and robbed Gringotts so that we could figure out what vaults belong to the Death Eaters so that we can rob them blind later without anyone being the wiser, well that and they have books…" he tempted them.

Lily glanced back and forth between Harry and Sirius a couple of times as she tried to figure out if this was one of Sirius's idiotic pranks. "Let me get this straight, Sirius talked you into setting up a time loop and robbing Gringotts?"

Sirius pouted. "Hey, none of that. It was Harry's idea."

The other Lily rubbed her face in frustration. "You're supposed to be the adult Sirius."

Sirius reached up and lifted Harry up then set him on the couch. "I know that but despite the fact that he's physically fifteen months old, he's an adult mentally. Besides, he can fly, it's not like I could stop him anyways."

The pair of redheads exchanged glances, before one said, "Fine, just so this isn't a total waste, how can we help?"

Harry asked, "Does that mean you're not mad?"

Lily snorted. "I'm rather annoyed that you didn't bring us in on the plan to start with."

The other Lily said, "If by plan you mean insanity then sure, that works."

"That said, how can we help?"

Harry said, "I managed to grab the Horcrux that Bellatrix had hidden as well as a shelf of books and several filing cabinets of records that I'm hoping will tell us the vault numbers of various death eaters."

Lily said, "They're going to come looking for the filing cabinets, tracking charms, the whole works most likely."

Harry nodded. "Most likely, that's why I kidnapped the clerk I found in the records room. If we pump him full of truth potion we can probably figure out how to open the filing cabinets without them exploding. Sirius is an auror or at least was, he should have some experience questioning people under a truth potion."

Sirius nodded. "It wouldn't be the first time."

Lily asked, "You're going to reset the time loop aren't you?"

"We sort of have to," Sirius admitted.

The other Lily asked suspiciously, "Why?"

Sirius smirked. "I sort of killed Borgin with a cursed necklace he had."

Lily blinked in surprise. "How the hell did you do that?"

"I disillusioned it, then tossed it at him with a pair of gloves while he was busy with another customer. The customer was a suspected death eater and had a little… accident as well. After that I picked up several dozen books as well as various magical items that I wouldn't mind taking apart to see if we can learn anything."

"Sirius!" they chorused.

"What? Harry is going to reset the time loop and no one will remember it because it won't have happened," Sirius replied.

The other Lily said, "That means you could have just bought the books."

Sirius shook his head. "I would have felt dirty buying stuff from him."

"And killing him was better?" Lily asked incredulously.

"Yep, I figure I'll share the memory with Harry then he can share it with me when he gets back."

Harry said, "Sure, he helped Draco Malfoy sneak a bunch of Death Eaters into the school the last time around, so I'm not really a fan of his shop."

Lily looked down her nose at Harry. "Don't encourage him."

Harry reached into his inventory and pulled the goblin clerk out of it. "He's the clerk, he should know how to get into the filing cabinet without setting off the various curses. I'm going to grab a sandwich, I've been flying around for the last couple of hours."

Lily looked at her alternate. "Do you want to get Harry a sandwich while Sirius and I question the goblin or do you want me to?"

"I'll make our little thief a sandwich." The other Lily smiled at Harry to take the sting out of it. She knew she should be pissed, but honestly she could understand why they'd want to do a test run before telling them, she would have worried herself to death if she'd thought Harry was robbing Gringotts rather than just taking a walk in the alley with Sirius or wandering around somewhere 'safe'. Besides, playing it cool now meant that Harry would probably explain the time loops the next time around and she had a decent number of potions experiments that could really benefit from time loops.

Harry followed Lily hoping that he could figure out a way to spin things so that his mums wouldn't be too unhappy in the timeline that he was going to keep.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry couldn't help his smile as he glanced around the tent where his family was looking over the stolen books and various magical items, trying to find any last crumbs of useful information in the stacks of stolen books before he loaded his saved game for his second attempt. He'd gotten to know his parents and Sirius a bit more over the last two weeks they'd spent pouring over the stolen books and records.

His father had a warped and mostly amusing sense of humor as did his mother, though hers was a bit more refined and less geared toward pranks. "Has anyone found anything Earth shattering?"

James looked up from the book he was reading. "Does a new charm for mind controlling slugs count?"

Harry snorted. "Let's go with no. We can always catch it the next time around if we have to."

Lily looked at Harry sadly. "In that case, you should probably reset things before something goes wrong with your time loop and we're stuck with the statute of secrecy being ripped apart."

Harry blushed in embarrassment. "It's not like I knew there was a television crew filming a live story at the time…"

Sirius laughed. "It was rather amusing watching Fudge running around with his head cut off."

"Don't worry, I'll share the memories you shared after I reset the loop. I'll even share some of the crap he did in my world so you can understand why I hate him."

Lily sighed. "You might as well reset things…"

Harry reached up, touched his nose, said, "Load game." and found himself outside of their tent where he'd saved the game.

Sirius pulled his hood up. "Let's head to Diagon alley before I change my mind."

Harry shook his head. "Give me a second, I just loaded the save game."

Sirius blinked. "Save game?"

"It's what I call my time loops," Harry explained.

"What happened?" Sirius asked curiously.

"I might have shattered the statute of secrecy by unleashing a dragon on London," Harry admitted.

Sirius stared at Harry's green eyes which was really the only part of Harry that he could see because of his charmed outfit. "Where did you find a dragon?"

"Chained up under Gringotts," Harry admitted.

"Did you manage to steal anything useful?"

Harry reached up and took his mask off and stuck it in his inventory so that Sirius could see his face. "Various old family books and magical items that we spent the last two weeks combing through for interesting spells that weren't horribly dark."

"Did you find the cup?" Sirius asked hopefully.

"Right where it should be in Bellatrix's vault."

"Fantastic, let's go explain things to Lily then we can review what you found out and figure out how to get the cup without unleashing a dragon on London." Sirius wasn't really a fan of the statute of secrecy as he didn't think wizards had the right to modify memories because of lazy wizards, but he wanted a bit more information on the fallout before he suggested that they do something as potentially world changing as shatter it into little pieces.

"Sounds good. I've got some memories to share from the time loop." Harry turned and headed back into the tent to face what he was sure was going to be a rather loud conversation.

Lily looked up from her book as a mostly invisible Harry and Sirius walked back into the tent. "Is there a reason you're wearing disillusioned clothes Harry?"

Harry nodded his head. "Yep, Sirius said we should rob Gringotts."

Sirius sputtered, "Harry!"

Lily raised her eyebrows. "Even he isn't that crazy, what's going on?"

Harry snickered at the look on Sirius's face. "I have the ability to set up time loops, basically I can start a time loop then reset it to the instant I created the time loop."

"Let's assume for a second that you're not playing a practical joke, do you have any proof?"

"I called a coin toss twenty times for Sirius the first time around using my time loops." Harry opened his inventory and pulled out his pensieve. "I can show you a bunch of memories from the two weeks I spent in the loop. We worked on learning spells and stealing goblin secrets."

Lily frowned as she considered Harry's statement for a couple of seconds then sighed as she realized that this was a bit too much trouble for James to go to for a prank... probably. "Let's start with a couple of memories and we'll go from there once I'm sure this isn't one of James' stupid pranks."

Harry laughed as he walked over to the table and set the large bowl down then pulled his wand out of his inventory. "Don't worry, this isn't a prank. I'm not much of a prankster, I grew up with the Dursleys."

Lily scowled as she thought about her sister and her sister's husband. "That should have never happened."

Sirius shook his head. "I can't believe I didn't kill them the last time around."

"I'm fairly sure you weren't thinking straight after over a decade in prison with the dementors." Harry pulled out the memory that the Lily from the loop had left the current Lily. "The other Lily left a memory for you."

"If this is a prank, you're grounded until you graduate," Lily stated firmly.

Harry shook his head. "Don't worry, if I prank you, it will be something fun and harmless not something crazy."

"Just as long as you realize that I'll prank you back," Lily replied then walked over and looked at the memory in the bowl.

Sirius looked at Harry. "Did my future self leave me with any messages?"

"Just a couple of memories of various people running around like headless chickens after the dragon was recorded on live television and rebroadcast to the world."

Sirius shook his head. "I still can't believe it was that easy to bring everything crashing down."

Harry smirked. "The prime minister was rather angry about the war against Voldemort putting his citizens at risk and the Ministry's inability or unwillingness to deal with the problem. Without the dragon getting loose he probably wouldn't have been able to do anything about it, I know he didn't the last time around."

Sirius could see how having a dragon flying over London in the middle of the day would cause a lot of problems for the ministry. "Still, the obliviators should have been able to explain it away as a mass hallucination."

"They probably would have if the prime minister hadn't had a dozen muggle born witches and wizards in his cabinet that worked for him keep the ministry from forcing the issue. Tens of thousands of people had seen the dragon with their own eyes and hundreds of thousands had seen it on live television then millions as it was rebroadcast to the world. Not to mention the obliviators were already massively overworked with the sheer number of parties when people found out Voldemort was missing. The ministry probably could have still spun it as a hocus except that the prime minister shared the whole ugly truth about the wizarding world on live television in a press conference with a couple of masked wizards to help put the nail in the coffin."

"And with the dragon… that would be enough," Sirius realized.

"Not to mention a bunch of unhappy muggleborn witches and wizards came out of the woodwork in masks and started tossing up semi permanent glowing lights and various other spells around the world to prove the existence of magic."

Sirius shook his head. "How bad was the backlash against the magical world?"

Harry shrugged. "The prime minister did a decent job painting the average magical citizens as normal people with magic, dealing with a corrupt government but there are enough idiots in the world that a backlash was pretty much assured."

"I'd rather avoid revealing the wizarding world at least until we've had a chance to clean up the ministry."

"Cleaning up the ministry is on my to do list," Harry assured him.

Lily pulled her head away from the pensieve. "I can't believe you actually broke into the bank."

Harry scowled as he thought about the goblins. "I needed to make sure the cup was in Bellatrix's vault. Besides, Griphook tried to kill me the last time around and the goblins tried to rob me blind after I defeated Voldemort because I had to break into a vault to kill Voldemort."

"Wizards haven't treated the goblins all that well either," she pointed out.

Harry snorted. "I don't care. I made a deal in good faith with Griphook to get the cup. While I will admit that I missed the detail about getting out of the bank in the actual deal, we'd talked about how to get out of the bank so it was reasonable to assume it was included. The moment I had the cup he grabbed the sword and left my friends and I to die in the vault even knowing that I hadn't destroyed the cup yet nor the rest of Voldemort's horcruxes. So, yeah no, I don't have a problem with stealing everything I can from the greedy little monsters including secrets on how to make goblin silver and galleons."

Sirius spoke up, "You do realize most of them are taller than you are, right?"

"Currently."

Lily asked, "What else did you learn?"

"I'll start making a list." Harry figured writing it down would be easier in the long run.

0o0o0

Harry looked away from the stack of notes on the 'living' room table his dictation quill had scribed and over at one of his mothers. "Everything is sort of blurring together."

Lily looked up from reading one of the pages of notes that Harry had dictated about his adventure in Gringotts. "In that case, maybe it's time to change directions for a bit, we've been at this for three days."

"We should go after some of the other Horcruxes," Sirius suggested as he walked into the tent's living room from outside.

Harry turned and looked at Sirius, "Any luck getting the locket?"

"It's dealt with. My father was disturbingly helpful after I explained about Regulus's death and the reason for it. I don't think I've ever heard him tell my mother to stuff it before, it was almost worth going back to that house." Sirius shivered. "We apparated to the coast and my father torched the locket with fiendfyre, Kreature was disturbingly happy."

"Good, that just leaves the diadem in Hogwarts, the ring, the diary in Malfoy's manor and the cup in the vault."

"Getting access to the diary should be easier after Malfoy goes to prison," Lily mused.

The other Lily set the page of notes she'd been reading down and looked at Harry. "I wouldn't mind trying to unravel the curses on the ring if a certain someone would tell us where it is."

"Sure, let me just set up a time loop and I'll tell you." Harry reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game Saved."

Harry let his arm drop back to his side. "It's under a shack. I have a feeling this might take a couple of tries before we get it right."

"Any reason that we can't just torch the shack with fiendfyre?" Sirius asked as he walked over and sat down in a chair.

"I want the stone in the ring, it belonged to a many, many times great uncle on Dad's side and it can be used to talk to the dead."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "You're talking about the resurrection stone?"

"It doesn't actually bring people back from the dead, but yeah," Harry agreed.

"You mean it's not just a myth?" Sirius asked in disbelief.

"Part myth part amazing craftsmanship is my guess. Three brothers, one stone that can talk to the dead, one legendary wand and one cloak that never wore out over the centuries, sound familiar?"

Sirius rubbed his face. "How the hell did we miss that?"

Lily looked at Sirius curiously. "What are you talking about?"

"James's cloak, it was his father's cloak and his father's cloak before him and so on… I figured it was just rather impressive craftsmanship or that they just kept replacing the cloak or touching it up now and then."

"It is, Dumbledore has the wand, Dad has the cloak and the stone is buried under a shack with a death curse on the ring," Harry assured her.

"Dumbledore has the elder wand?" Lily asked, just to be sure she was hearing him right.

Harry grinned. "He took it from Grindelwald after their duel. I would have stolen a copy in the tutorial if I could have figured out a way to get Dumbledore to the house."

Lily shook her head bemusedly. "Now what?"

"Considering I didn't tell you where it is, I'm going to recreate my time loop then we'll go see what we can find out." Harry touched his nose and saved his game again.

"Game saved."

0o0o0

Lily put her ear plugs in then lit the stick of dynamite she'd 'borrowed' from a muggle construction company and tossed it through the shack's window and ran for it. Normally, she wouldn't have been this reckless, but Albus had placed a couple of detection charms around the shack and any magic alerted him. Normally she wouldn't care if Albus knew she was hunting down Horcruxes but in his particular case, with this particular item, Albus had gotten himself cursed a couple of times in previous loops much to Harry's frustration. She ran behind the cart they'd 'borrowed' from further down the road. It wasn't great cover but she didn't want to use magic unless they had to.

Sirius waited for the explosion to light the evening up then took his silenced earplugs out. "That was fun," He stood up and looked at the destruction with a grin on his face.

Lily pulled her earplugs out and stuck them in one of her pockets. "You're the one with dragonhide gloves."

Sirius picked up his long pry bar and made his way over to the ruined shack. He slammed the pry bar into the rotting floorboard where Harry had shown him a memory of the box resting then ripped the boards up so that he could use the end of the bar to hook the handle of the box. He didn't want to touch the box even with his gloves until they did more spell work and he didn't want to do the spell work here. He carefully walked back over to the cart with the box as far away from him as possible.

Lily shook her head . "If I didn't know you weren't being paranoid, I'd call you paranoid."

"Let's get the cart out of here before someone comes to investigate the noise," Sirius said as he dropped the box and crowbar in the back of the cart then grabbed the handles in front of the cart and started pulling it further down the road.

"Hopefully this works," Lily muttered as she helped him with the cart

Sirius snorted as they hauled the cart down the road back to where they'd 'borrowed' it from. "If we can move the box to a secure location, Harry can start another loop and we can work on the box without Albus showing up to 'help'."

"That brings up another question, do we tell Albus about the Horcrux in Hogwarts or do we just sneak in and grab it?" Lily asked.

"Considering the sheer number of ways into Hogwarts, I'm inclined to just sneak in and steal it, that way we don't have to explain how we know what we know until after Voldemort is completely gone," Sirius replied thoughtfully.

Lily shook her head, "I'd rather not have him looking at Harry too closely."

"Yeah, he might try to obliviate Harry so that he can grow up normal or something stupid like that," he pointed out.

Lily scowled as she thought of anyone hurting her son. "If he tries, I'll kill him."

"It shouldn't come to that. He has a lot on his mind right now with all of the trials." Sirius pulled the cart back into place where they'd grabbed it from then walked around to the back of the cart and looked at the box. He picked up the pry bar then used the tip to pick up the box by the handle and move it to the ground. He wedged the pry bar into the crack between the lid and the box and twisted.

Lily frowned slightly as she watched the tip of the pry bar turn black and crumble as the lid was forced open. "Nasty."

Sirius dropped the pry bar as the curse quickly traveled up the shaft. "Yeah, I'm starting to think that Riddle didn't trust people."

Lily smirked. "I don't think he did either."

Sirius pulled a pair of metal tongs out of his expanded belt pouch and used them to reach in and grab the ring resting 'innocently' in the box. "I feel like I'm back in potions waiting for something to explode."

"The only reason one of your potions would have exploded was because you put something in it to make it explode." Lily pulled out her wand and used it to turn the box into slag so that it wouldn't curse any innocent muggles that happened to find it.

"Back to the tent?"

"Remember that patch of brambles about a mile away from the tent?" Lily asked with amusement.

"You mean the one with a very narrow area without brambles?" Sirius laughed softly.

"That's the one. Give me ten seconds then follow me." Lily apparated to the 'safe' area in the patch of brambles then lit her wand and slipped through the opening and out on the trail being careful to avoid the thorns. She turned and smiled as Sirius appeared. "We should probably move the camp."

Sirius carefully made his way out of the brambles holding the ring as far away from him as he could using the tongs. "Probably," he agreed with a shrug.

"I was thinking about Severus and Peter." Lily increased the light coming from her wand as she walked down the trail toward camp.

"What about them?" Sirius asked as he followed Lily.

"I was thinking about coming out with a story about how Severus and Peter sold Voldemort down the river, to make sure that Albus can never hire Severus, as the Death Eaters would make it impossible for him to take any public position without getting killed. Plus, I actually like Peter's parents, and they don't need to know that the war broke him, so him dying before his treachery comes to light is acceptable."

"So you'd make them heroes?" Sirius asked in disbelief.

"Dead ones," she agreed. "Severus made his own choices regardless of his horrible homelife, and Peter… I still don't know what the hell happened there. Maybe Voldemort obliviated the hell out of him or put him under a curse or something. I'd really like to find out more before I toss him to the wolves. Snape however, tried to make a deal with Voldemort so he could save me, not making any effort to save my husband or child, which his actions put in danger in the first place,

so I want him locked up or dead. If we come out with a story about how Snape sold out the Death Eaters then they'll be gunning for him so even if he stays out of prison he'll have a very limited shelf life."

"Never piss off a redhead," Sirius muttered as they walked down the path back toward the tent.

"What was that?" Lily asked with amusement as she'd heard exactly what he'd muttered.

"Nothing, I was just thinking about ways that we can spin things," he lied.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked curiously.

"If we spin Peter as a hero that tragically died destroying Voldemort then nothing stops us from locking him in a rat cage for a couple of years."

Lily snorted. "Let's figure out how guilty he is before we throw him under the bridge, but I like the idea I came up with for how to deal with Severus. I don't want him anywhere near Hogwarts or children, any children, ever."

"I don't either." Sirius fell silent as they walked through the woods.

0o0o0

Lily grumbled as they got closer to the door that lead into the Chamber of Secrets, "I can't believe I let you talk me into sneaking down here."

"Do we have a plan if the basilisk is loose?" James asked cautiously.

Harry glanced down at James from his spot on his mother's shoulders. "If I die the loop resets; if you get turned to stone, I'll reset the loop." He glanced over at the sleeping rooster Sirius was holding. "We have a sleeping rooster, I'll call the basilisk forth while we have our eyes closed, then we shake the rooster awake and the basilisk dies, simple and much easier than the last time around."

James held up one of his family's goblin made blades. "At which point we stab the creature so our weapons can destroy Voldemort's horcruxes?"

"That's the plan." Harry focused on the door and hissed, "Open."

Lily kept her off hand on Harry's ankle and her right hand on her wand as the door opened revealing the so called Chamber of Secrets. "Let's get this over with."

Harry almost felt sorry for the sleeping basilisk when he woke it up and called it forth only for Sirius to wake the rooster up which let out a cry and killed the beast. "Killing it with a sword was more impressive."

Lily opened her eyes and and looked at the massive snake in horrified awe. "Seeing it in a pensieve just isn't the same."

James opened his eyes and stared at the basilisk in disbelief. "Damn…"

Sirius laughed. "And I killed it, that should be good for getting some tail."

"No one will believe you." Harry snickered at the look of disappointment on Sirius's face.

Sirius mock pouted. "Don't ruin the moment."

James walked over and worked on carefully propping open the beast's mouth with so they could stab into its venom sacks and coat their collection of goblin forged blades, hopefully without getting any of it on them considering how toxic it was.

Harry opened his inventory and pulled out one of the goblin forged chalices that they'd brought to store some of the venom in for future use. He was just glad that his inventory would keep everything fresh until they could find a use for it or a buyer. "Let's carefully grab what we need then we can sneak up and grab the diadem."

James couldn't help the smile on his face as he worked. 'If this works, Voldemort will be dead and we'll have most of his supporters in prison by Christmas.'

0o0o0

Harry floated over the tent's living room end table where half of the Peverell family ring was sitting innocently or not so innocently. Sirius had used one of the daggers and a hammer to cut the ring in half as they didn't want to damage the stone. "The stone looks intact so I think we're in business."

"Good, now get back over here and set up a loop so that we can keep testing things," Lily replied.

Harry flew back over to where his mother was standing and touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

"The loop is set up," he reported.

Lily pointed at the ring with her wand and flicked then twisted it causing the gold to 'melt' off of the stone.

Harry blinked. "Where did you learn that?"

"On one of my trips to the restricted section to look up spells for a transfiguration project. It was used in the old days to refine metal to an acceptable level. They'd just crush the rocks containing the ore then use the spell while focusing on the metal and the precious metal bits would liquefy so they could collect them."

"Why don't they teach that at Hogwarts?" Harry asked in frustration.

"Lack of interest for the most part. The goal of education is to teach you the skills you need to teach yourself or at least that was how it was explained to me."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard … but I guess I just sort of skated through last time…" Harry trailed off rather embarrassed that he'd slacked off as much as he had the last time around.

"The last time around you had to deal with a rather large number of distractions. I'm sure you'll do better this time around," Lily replied firmly.

He quickly reassured his mother, "Of course, I'm planning on keeping up with Hermione this time." He was looking forward to seeing how many scholastic records he could break while having loads of fun this time.

"Good. Hopefully you won't have to worry about Snape and Trelawney this time around."

"I think I'd quit if I had to put up with him again and I'm not planning on taking Divination so I shouldn't have to deal with Trelawney. If I can figure out a way to get Binns to move on I'm going to, preferably before I start school," Harry mused thoughtfully.

"Best of luck, I hated that class." Lily smiled at Harry in a conspiratorial manner. "Don't tell your father but I used earplugs and a dictation quill. It was easier to just read the textbook during class and the notes later than try to pay attention to Binns."

Harry laughed as he pictured his mother pretending to pay attention while people fell asleep around her. "That's not a bad idea."

Lily turned and looked at the stone sitting innocently on the table. "Who are you going to call first?"

"I'm not sure, I have the names of several dead goblin smiths and a couple of historical figures that were supposed to have some interesting tricks that I wouldn't mind talking to. Do you have anyone that you'd want to talk to?" he asked curiously.

Lily considered the question for a couple of seconds before replying, "Not really, I was fairly young when my grandparents died and Mum and Dad are on a world tour so I don't think the stone will help."

"They've alive? Aunt Petunia said they were dead," Harry sputtered.

Lily snorted. "Right because she's the most trustworthy person in the world. It's possible they died in your original timeline, but it's much more likely that Petunia just didn't want to talk about them and someone reported you dead with the attack. They reacted rather poorly to her deciding to marry a fat loudmouthed bigot, words were exchanged and Petunia stormed off."

"If they're alive, why did I get stuck with Petunia?" Harry asked in disbelief.

"I'm not sure. It might have been because of the anti tracking bracelets we charmed for them kept the ministry from tracking them down or maybe Albus just lost his goddamned marbles and decided that placing you with Petunia would work out. How the hell he'd come to that conclusion, I have no idea."

Harry took a breath then let it out as he realized that it didn't matter, his parents were alive and he'd never put up with living with the Dursleys a second time. "On that cheerful note, I think I'm going to update the time loop and we can test the stone on some goblin smiths and try to figure out where we need to start for turning silver into goblin silver."

"We have to start somewhere." Lily was hoping they'd be able to recover a fair number of secrets using the stone.

Harry touched his nose. "Save game."

"Game saved."

"The new loop is set up, go ahead and pick up the stone."

Lily walked over and carefully touched the stone. It felt cool to the touch but other than that no different than most stones. She pulled her finger back from the stone and examined it. "It looks the same and doesn't hurt which probably means that we removed all of the curses on it."

Harry sighed in relief. He'd had enough of watching his mother die even if he could just reset things by loading his saved game, but she insisted on testing for curses herself rather than let him try it. "In that case, give it a whirl."

Lily turned the stone three times and focused on calling Ignotus Peverell.

A remarkably solid ghost like figure with wild black hair and black robes appeared after the third twist. "Ah, my brother's stone."

"Please don't take this the wrong way but is the story true?" Lily asked curiously.

Ignotus smiled in a knowing and slightly mischievous way at the toddler and witch. "I presume you are talking about the tale of the so called Deathly Hallows?"

"I'm guessing by your response that the story isn't true?" she guessed.

"Not as such. While the cloak, wand and stone exist, they are merely exceptionally crafted magical items that took on a bit of a legend. I blame my older brother, he couldn't keep his mouth shut when he got drunk and loved to brag."

"Is that how he died?"

Ignotus glanced at Harry then back at Lily. "Nah, he died in bed at a hundred and fifty with a couple of muggle girls."

Lily shook her head. "Does that mean that Cadmus didn't kill himself?"

"Ah, nah he transfigured a body and faked his death after moving most of his inventions to a different town. A couple too many close calls with people trying to steal the stone for one reason or another," he explained.

Harry asked, "Do you have any tricks that you can share?"

Ignotus grinned. "I was hoping that you'd ask. Tell you what, if you tell me how you came to have several copies of my cloak, I'd be more than willing to teach a descendant magic."

"When I first got sent back I might have been in an alternate world." He wasn't sure how else to explain being stuck in a videogame to someone that had been born in the middle ages. "I managed to grab a copy of my parents and the cloak and then things shifted and I was back with my parents. I grabbed another copy of the cloak... and long story short I ended up with several cloaks and an extra set of my parents and godfather."

Ignotus laughed. "Interesting, any idea how you came back in time?"

"No, the last thing I remember was getting hit by a bus, a large horseless carriage," he explained.

"I'm dead, not stupid. I know what a bus is, we can peek into the real world in various situations and on various days. How much do they cover enchanting at Hogwarts?" he asked.

"They cover charms…" Harry trailed off with a shrug.

"Blah, I don't mean the crap that fades in a couple of months or years, I mean stuff that will last centuries or thousands of years if you're good," he said firmly.

Other than his cloak, various parts of Hogwarts, the Arch of Death and artifacts from the founders, Harry couldn't think of too many things that had that sort of lifespan. "Dumbledore created a magical item that captures light and restores it, but most of what we learned in Hogwarts only lasts a couple of years at most."

Ignotus shook his head and said, "In that case, let's start from the beginning."

"How long can you stay?" Lily asked.

"As long as I need to."

"The stories said it caused the ghosts pain to stay."

"Eh, yet another thing the stories got both right and wrong. Then again I shouldn't have expected much from that hack bard. Cadmus called his lost love for weeks on end before she got tired of him not living his life and told him that he was causing her heartache by not moving on. Our situation isn't even close to the same. You're here to learn a skill. Once you get the basics down, you shouldn't have to call me other than the occasional project or to give me updates on your progress. In other words, don't worry about it," he assured her.

"That's good to know," Lily admitted.

Harry asked, "Where do we start?"

"Do you have a wand you can comfortably use?" Ignotus asked.

"Every wand I have is rather large," Harry admitted.

"In that case, we'll start with crafting wands. I'm not an expert like my brother, but few people are or ever were to tell you the truth. Your mother can help."

Lily nodded her agreement. "I'd be happy to."

Harry listened intently as Ignotus launched into a spirited explanation of wand crafting.


	6. Chapter 6

James wanted to smirk as he blasted open Malfoy's drawing room floor, much to the other man's complete disbelief and horror.

Sirius stared at James. "That's one way to do it."

"I had a tip." James walked over and picked up the diary with his dragon hide glove then pulled out his dagger and stabbed the book causing it to leak black ink.

Malfoy pulled himself together and drew his wand on the two aurors. "I'll have your wand-" he fell silent as Sirius's overpowered confusion charm caused everything to get fuzzy.

Sirius snorted. "So much for a nice clean job."

Dobby popped in and blinked then asked in confusion, "What happened to the floor?"

Sirius looked at Malfoy and ordered, "Give Dobby your cloak."

Malfoy frowned slightly as he tried to figure out why he needed to take his cloak off but at the same time it did feel sort of heavy.

Dobby's eyes widened as his master handed him the cloak. "Master has given Dobby clothes. Dobby is a free elf!"

Malfoy pulled his mind back from the fuzzy state when he heard those alarming words. "What? I didn't…" He brought his wand back up only for Dobby to hit him in the chest with a blast of magical force that caved in his chest sending bone shards into his heart.

James sighed as he looked down at the soon to be dead wizard. "That's going to cause a mess."

Sirius glanced down at his watch. "Nah, Narcissa is out showing off Draco. We'll just write down that we showed up and that the house elf showed us around."

"And Malfoy?" James asked curiously.

"The coward left the door to his drawing room hidey hole open and fled while the house elf distracted us or at least that's my best guess. I'd rather not let the ministry chop off Dobby's head."

Dobby shook his head rapidly, his ears flapping. "Dobby doesn't want to die, Dobby likes his head! Dobby didn't mean to kill bad master!"

James flicked his his wand and transfigured Malfoy into a rock then scoured the floor removing any trace of blood. He repaired the floor safe he'd blasted apart with another wave. "Which means that Malfoy obviously pulled a runner when we showed up." He tossed the damaged book back in the open safe. "Let's call in another team to pick up the evidence."

0o0o0

Umbridge scowled as someone knocked on her door. "Come in."

Sirius walked in. "Hello."

"What do you want Malfoy? You're supposed to be on the run… why does your visitor badge say kill Umbridge for-"

Sirius raised his silenced shotgun and blew a hole through her chest then stuffed the gun in his bag. 'No anti werewolf legislation or muggleborn registration laws for you bitch.' He knew he should feel guilty about the fact that he'd just murdered Umbridge, but he really didn't considering all of the memories Harry had shown him of what she'd done the last time around.

He headed out of Umbridge's office and gave one of the ministry wizards a leer much like he'd seen some creepy bastards give various waitresses over the years and continued on his way out of the building rather glad that the other Sirius was in the director's office getting yelled at for letting Malfoy escape. He frowned slightly as he saw Albus Dumbledore heading toward the Director's office. 'Time to get the hell out of here.'

He reached into an empty office, pulled his hood up and floo'ed to the Leaky Cauldron. He sneered at the barkeep as he made his way out of the place just so he'd remember seeing Malfoy if anyone asked. He quickly walked around the corner then apparated back to Godric's Hollow to continue fixing up the cabin. 'Hopefully the other me isn't having too horrible of a time of it.'

The other Sirius looked over at Albus as he walked into the Director's office, "Albus."

Crouch looked up as Albus walked into his office holding a newspaper. "Can I help you with something?"

Albus glanced over at where Sirius and James were sitting looking less than happy. "Ah, forgive me for interrupting, but I'd hoped to talk to you about Severus Snape."

Crouch scowled at the barmy old coot. "I realize that your plan resulted in Voldemort's death, but I would have liked to be kept in the loop. Using two recent graduates as moles that led him into a trap was risky, even if it by all appearances worked."

Albus looked at James. "I wasn't aware that Severus was helping you."

James shrugged in response. "As I told the reporter, Severus Snape told Voldemort about the prophecy, which allowed us to ambush him to weaken him. That should be enough to get every Death Eater in the world looking for a piece of him. I may have implied that he was helping us, but I never actually claimed that he was on our side. Either way, he'll certainly never find work in the British Isles, which means that he'll be somewhere else, annoying other people."

"You ruined a man's life for petty revenge?" Albus demanded.

James snorted derisively. "He tried to talk Voldemort into only killing myself and Harry so he could have Lily after he drugged her full of love potions or maybe he was just delusional enough to think that if I died, she'd run to him for some reason that makes no sense. Either way, I want him nowhere near my family and if you ever offer him a teaching position I will use every," he glanced over at Crouch, "legal method in my power to destroy both of you."

Albus sighed. "And Voldemort?"

"Officially, he was injured and had to retreat," James replied.

Crouch asked, "And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, he's dead. Sirius and I tracked down his last Horcrux today and destroyed it," he said with a grin.

Dumbledore blinked in shock. "Last? As in he had more than one?"

"Thomas Marvolo Riddle made several." James gestured toward the damaged diary on the table. "He gave that one to Malfoy to protect."

Crouch frowned thoughtfully. "Is that why you wanted in on the raid and searched so diligently?"

"Yes, I wanted to make sure he was dead," James replied.

"What made you suspect that he had Horcruxes?"

Sirius spoke up, "My brother found one of them but died in the process of trying to destroy it. He set up some safeguards in the event of his death. I received a letter with certain information that started our hunt. Either way, Voldemort is dead and not coming back which means that you can find a decent divination teacher or not. Your problem with defense teachers was a result of him hiding one of the Horcruxes in Hogwarts but we dealt with that one as well."

Albus sighed in relief. "That will certainly make things easier."

"How long has he been dead?" Crouch demanded.

James grinned slightly. "Since Halloween, he didn't make it out of our house, but if you release that information I'll claim that you're lying."

"Why didn't you tell people? People have a right to know," Dumbledore said.

"Because I wanted to make sure he was completely dead before the various Death Eaters had a chance to go to ground and hide his Horcruxes. I also didn't want them gunning for me or my family beyond the attention they pay any auror. That reminds me, I quit," James said.

Crouch blinked in shocked disbelief. "What?"

"I'm rather wealthy, I don't actually need this job and honestly I don't want this job anymore. The various Death Eaters are already buying themselves out of prison and the imperious defense is ridiculous. I can understand not wanting truth potions used in most criminal investigations, because of the risk of turning them into fishing expeditions but for marked Death Eaters claiming the imperious defense, I think a truth potion should be required or perhaps a magical oath to prove their innocence, not how much they can afford to pay," James replied.

Crouch scowled darkly. "You're leaving me short staffed."

James stood up, reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out his badge and tossed it on the table. "Hire some muggleborns, oh wait, most of the smart ones headed to America when the Death Eaters started their shit. Either way, I'm not going to put my life in danger for a system this screwed up when I can make more of a difference taking my family's seat on the Wizengamot."

Sirius pulled his auror badge out of his pocket and set it on the table. "I joined because I wanted to make a difference. I think I'll start a joke shop, it's more honest and probably less stressful. Best of luck keeping the various Death Eaters in prison."

Albus sighed heavily. "We need qualified aurors."

"There are still a fair number of them running around," James turned and headed for the door.

Crouch scowled at his back. "Don't expect to come crawling back here."

Sirius resisted the urge to insult his ex-boss as he left.

Crouch turned and glared at Dumbledore. "Did you put them up to this?"

"No, I saw the story about Severus in the paper and wanted to find out what was going on." Albus sighed as he realized that his plans for hiring Snape as a potions teacher had just went up in flames. 'Ah well, maybe I can talk Lily into teaching potions.' He made a mental note to ask them the real story behind Voldemort's death once James had a chance to calm down. How they'd known he was planning on hiring Severus was also something he was curious about, but that was of far less importance.

0o0o0

Harry wasn't sure what hurt more, seeing the lack of recognition on Hermione's small face as she looked up from playing in the sandbox with her unicorn toy as he walked over or the fact that she was sitting on the snow alone. It might have been because it was a rather cold December day which required them to be bundled up but it felt like more than that. "Hi, I'm Harry Potter."

Hermione smiled hesitantly. "Mione," she mumbled shyly.

Harry forced himself to ignore the pain that ripped through his chest as she obviously didn't recognize his name. He'd been holding out some shred of hope that she'd somehow come back with him. He knew it was stupid and crazy but he still wasn't sure how he'd come back so it might have been possible. He forced himself to give her an honest smile despite the fact that he missed his friend. "I like your unicorn."

Hermione tilted her head slightly as if she was trying to figure out if Harry was teasing her then held it up so that he could see it. "Bella."

Harry glanced at a pile of snow on the edge of the sandbox. "She needs a castle, do you want to help?"

Hermione glanced over at her mother then back at Harry. "Yes."

Harry smiled as he 'helped' Hermione make a snow castle.

0o0o0

Harry frowned slightly as he looked down at the two candles on his birthday cake then over at his rather pregnant mother. He was looking forward to having a couple of siblings to make up for not having any the last time around. "There should be more candles."

Lily chuckled as she looked away from the cake and up at her son who was floating at about eye level. "Do you even know how old you are mentally?"

"Twenty, give or take?" He wasn't actually sure how many weeks or months he'd spent in loops that he'd discarded while stealing goblin secrets and various other magical secrets from the dead. Most of the time he'd reset an hour or two at a time to test something or ask goblins or people questions that he didn't want anyone remembering him asking but he'd also occasionally tossed entire weeks at a time if something had gone wrong since the last save. It all added up to him not being sure exactly how old he was mentally as he hadn't exactly paid attention to how much time he was resetting.

"In that case, just think of each candle as worth a decade." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Aren't you supposed to be the adult here?" Harry asked curiously.

"I've got another couple of weeks of being an irresponsible witch before your sister is born and I have to be a responsible adult again."

Sirius stuck his head into the kitchen. "Don't believe her, she was never irresponsible."

Lily shook her finger at Sirius. "I'd hex you but that would be irresponsible and set a bad example."

"And you left your wand in the living room?" Sirius asked with amusement as he walked over and carefully picked up the tray the chocolate cake was on.

"That's the main reason," Lily admitted.

"Let's get the party started before the Dirty Dozen decide to sneak in here and steal the cake."

Lily shook her head. "You shouldn't encourage them."

"I blame the other Sirius, he's the evil twin." Sirius smirked as he walked back into the living room. "I have liberated the cake from the kitchen monster!"

Harry shook his head then followed Sirius. It was finally sinking in that this was his life. Despite the fact that he was twenty and trapped in the body of a two year old, he was happy or at least mostly happy with how things had turned out. The dirty dozen were a lot of fun to run around with, both around Godric's Hallow and in Diggle Hell which was one of the best ways of blowing off steam that he'd ever found.

The only thing that kept things from being perfect was that Hermione wasn't there with him, well that and having two save slots would be really nice. The twice monthly trip into London to a certain playground was probably the best and worst part of his life. Seeing Hermione reminded him that his Hermione was gone but at the same time he could see traces of the girl she would become or at least some of her better qualities. He wasn't sure why he kept torturing himself other than the smile on her face every time he showed up. He pulled himself out of his bleak thoughts as he flew over and sat between two of the Nymphadoras on the couch. "Ready for cake?"

Nymph laughed. "We're always ready for chocolate cake, especially your mums' chocolate cake."

James gave the various Nymphadoras mock suspicious looks as he put his hands on the other Lily's shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. "One of these days, we're going to have to get name tags for the dirty dozen."

"It wouldn't help, we'd just swap tags," replied one of the other Nymphadoras.

The Nymphadora on Harry's left glanced back between the two Jameses and the two pregnant Lilys. "We could say the same about you."

The Lily on the chair said, "We've considered rolling dice to see who gets to go with their middle name but we decided not to worry about it for the moment."

One of the Siriuses said, "It's more fun this way."

"Not to mention more confusing." Harry gestured at the candles and used a touch of magic to light them. "Let's see, hopefully I can blow the candles out." He winced slightly at Sirius's off key singing that got a lot better after both Lilys glared at him as everyone sang happy birthday to him.

Both Lilys said, "Make a wish Harry."

'I already have it, a happy safe family.' Harry floated over and blew the candles out and floated back to his spot and sat down.

The group of Nymphadoras shouted, "Cake!" at the same time.

The James that wasn't giving Lily a shoulder massage picked up a knife and started cutting the cake. "Happy second birthday, second decade or happy cake day..." he trailed off as the fireplace blazed and a slightly older Nymphadora tumbled out of the fireplace. "Just in time, I thought you weren't going to make it."

Dora picked herself up off the ground and dusted herself off. "Sorry, I had to rewrite an essay about why it's not polite to prank annoying old people."

"Did you learn anything?" one of the other Nymphadoras asked curiously.

"I learned that old people don't have very good senses of humor." She glanced between the various adults in the room. "With a couple of exceptions."

James snickered as he cut Harry a piece of cake and put it on a plate. "She has a point." He handed the plate to Sirius who put a scoop of ice cream on it then handed it to Harry. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks," Harry replied as he took the plate in both hands. He looked over at the 'unaltered' Nymphadora who firmly claimed that her name was Dora or Tonks but never Nymphadora. "Thanks for coming Dora."

Dora smiled at Harry. "Thanks for inviting me and for the delicious chocolate cake."

Lily snickered. "You're welcome anytime Dora."

"Thanks." She grinned as she walked over and sat down next to a pair of her sort of siblings/cousins/mad science experiments.

Harry made a mental note to pull Tonks along for at least a couple of Diggle adventures to see if it would help her clumsiness as he dug into his cake.

0o0o0

Harry yawned as he rushed over and picked up the telephone to stop it ringing before it woke up the munchkin patrol otherwise known as his sisters. He snapped, "Do you know what time it is?"

"Harry?" Hermione asked nervously.

"Hermione? Sorry, Mione, it's just early… and I didn't expect you to be the one calling, is something wrong?" Normally he called her on her birthday rather than the other way around at least that had been the case for the last couple of years and she called him on his and at Christmas.

"That depends on if you think Ron snores or a dozen other things I could ask…" she trailed off unsure of what to say now that Harry was actually on the phone. She'd woken up with two sets of memories that conflicted. In one she'd never had a real best friend then she'd went off and learned how to be a witch and picked up a best friend and a lazy friend that drove her spare, in the other much shorter set of memories she'd had Harry as a best friend for as long as she could remember. He appeared when she was blue, built snow castles with her and wrote her letters that always managed to brighten her day.

"You remember?" Harry asked with hope mixed with equal parts desperation. On the one hand he knew that none of his parents or the Nymphs would put Hermione up to this because he'd probably kill them but at the same time, he'd been stuck without her for almost six years.

"It's sort of jumbled together but I remember Hogwarts. I remember how much I don't like being called Mione and yet, I want to giggle when you call me Mione. You did that on purpose didn't you?"

Harry ignored the happy tears in his eyes as he snickered. "It was how you introduced yourself when we first met in this world." Never mind the fact that she'd been a toddler. "How? I mean why now? You were gone six years..." he trailed off not sure what to say.

"I'm not sure, I'm still trying to sort through everything, my older alternate had a lot of random things stuffed in her noggin. I should get off the phone before I ring up too much of a bill but you'll be here for my party, right?"

"Wild dragons couldn't stop me Mione," Harry replied firmly.

"I love you Harry." Hermione blushed as she quickly hung up the phone. 'Okay, Mione, get a grip, leaving everything a jumbled mess won't help.' She turned and headed back to her room to try to sort through the other Hermione's memories before Harry got there for her party.

Harry stared at the wall as stunned as if he'd been hit in the head by a bludger for a couple of seconds as he tried to put his thoughts in order.

Lily yawned as she walked into the living room in her robe. "Who was on the phone?"

"Hermione."

"It's rather early for her to call, is everything okay?" Lily asked in concern, normally the eight year old was pretty good about calling at a reasonable time. She frowned as she noticed her son had been crying. "What's wrong? Why are you crying? Did you say something you shouldn't have?"

Harry shook his head. "Nothing, she said she loves me and she remembers Hogwarts…" He smiled brightly despite the tears falling from his eyes. "She remembers Hogwarts… she's back…" He quickly reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

The ethereal voice said, "Game saved."

"I'm not alone… sorry, that didn't come out right."

Lily grinned as she walked over, picked Harry up and pulled him into a hug. "I'm glad that she's back. Any idea why?"

Harry hugged his mother, too happy to complain about her hugging the stuffings out of him. "No clue and I don't care right now."

The other Lily playfully swatted Lily's behind as she walked past on her way to get some coffee. She stopped at the door to the kitchen and looked back at the two of them, "Is there a reason you're crushing the life out of Harry?"

Lily grinned as she set Harry down. "Because Hermione remembers Hogwarts and apparently she loves him, they grow up so fast."

The Lily in the kitchen grinned at Harry. "Way to go." She looked up at James as he walked down the stairs. "Who had Hermione saying I love you when she got her memories back?"

Harry sputtered, "There was a pool?"

"Of course there was a pool," James flashed both Lilys smiles as he reached the bottom step, "it's tradition. As for who won the pool, I seem to recall Rose betting that Hermione would say I love you when she got her memories back."

"Please tell me she's not a divination prodigy," Harry muttered.

James laughed. "No, she'd just watched too many disney movies that week."

"That's a relief."

Lily only showed a hint of a smile as she shook her head, "I blame Sirius for corrupting our daughter."

The other Lily laughed. "I've seen her play cards, I'm fairly sure it's the other way around. She cheats more than he does. We should have named her Rose Holiday."

Harry smiled as he thought about Rose, she was pretty fun for a five year old, other than her habit of zooming around on a toy broom like a lunatic. "We should probably start breakfast."

The Lily near the kitchen said, "You're welcome to help."

"Sounds fun."

The other James yawned as he walked down the stairs. "Blue mage needs coffee badly."

Lily shook her head. "I should never have taken you and Harry to the arcade."

James laughed. "Oh come on, it was fun."

Harry spoke up, "Arcade games aren't going away anytime soon."

"Let's start breakfast for the horde." Lily turned and headed into the kitchen. She was just glad that when they'd rebuilt the cottage they'd put in a large basement and enlarged the rest of the house so they had enough room for everyone.

0o0o0

Harry blinked as his frizzy haired friend opened the door then promptly pulled him into a rather tight hug. "Ah, hi."

"I missed you," Hermione replied happily.

"Help, help, I need to breathe," Harry replied playfully as he gave her a tiny squeeze, being very careful not to squeeze her too hard.

Lily snickered as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. "If you have enough breath to talk then she's obviously not squeezing you hard enough."

Hermione let Harry go. "I'm glad that you're here Harry."

"Harry birthday." He pulled a narrow box out of his inventory and handed it to her.

Hermione stared at the box Harry and conjured from somewhere then opened it and stared at the excellently crafted wand. "Is that?"

"An actual magic wand? Yeah, I made it myself," Harry replied with a touch of smugness.

"And it works?" Hermione asked in disbelief.

Harry mock pouted as he put his hand over his heart. "Ouch, you wound me my lady."

Hermione picked it up and gave it a wave and was rather surprised that sparks came out of it. "It actually works."

"Of course it works, I wouldn't be much of a wand crafter if it didn't work." Harry pulled a package that looked like a book out of his inventory. "And this is the present I was going to get you."

Hermione put the wand back in the box. "Where did you conjure that from?"

"My inventory," Harry replied with amusement.

"You'll have to show me how to do that," Hermione replied eagerly.

Lily sighed. "Sadly, we haven't actually figured that part out. If you find, out, I'd love to know."

Rebecca Granger walked into the living room and smiled when she saw Lily. "I'm glad that you could come, I trust the drive wasn't too horrible?"

"About as bad as it ever is." Lily was just glad that she didn't have to make the drive to London all that often because it was a pain in the neck. She much preferred flooing to the Leaky Cauldron, tossing up some disillusionment charms then flying the rest of the way now that she'd figured out Harry's trick for flying without a broom.

"Come in and take a seat, I'll grab my booklist. We can give the kids a chance to talk before her grandparents get here and everyone else arrives."

"Sounds good." Lily smiled as she headed to the living room with Hermione and Harry. She liked Rebecca Granger, they'd gotten to know each other over the last few years and traded book suggestions when they met up for lunch so that Harry and Hermione could hang out. It had been a bit odd at first but she'd explained it as having to make the trip into London for work, thankfully other than some polite questions about antiques, she hadn't made an issue of her 'job'. The amusing part was that her lie had actually turned into an actual 'job' when she'd started selling some of the art objects Harry and the girls had recovered from the dungeons he liked to explore. The lunch dates were a nice bit of normal in an otherwise interesting and busy life involving magic.

Hermione waited until her mother left to grab her book list before she whispered, "Can I drop by later?"

Lily handed Hermione a small compact then whispered, "It's charmed to link to a mirror that Harry has so that you can talk to him."

"Thanks, this is easier than dealing with long distance bills," Hermione replied in a whisper.

Harry asked, "So… now what?"

Hermione heard her father's footsteps. "I believe we left off with a literary discussion of the Hobbit. We should have enough time to finish that discussion before my grandparents get here then people start trickling in. "

Harry tried to relax as he chatted with Hermione about one of her favorite books while they waited for her family to get there. He could tell she had questions but by the time they'd said hello to Hermione's father, her uncle had shown up and then a couple of cousins and from there, there just wasn't a good chance for her to sneak out of her own party.

0o0o0

Hermione set her book down on her nightstand then picked up her compact and opened it. She spent a couple of seconds looking at her reflection then whispered, "Harry."

Harry jumped slightly as he heard Hermione's voice come from his nightstand. He reached over and picked up the mirror. "Hermione." He smiled as the image in the mirror changed to show Hermione's face. "Hermione."

"Harry, thanks for coming to my birthday."

"I wouldn't miss it even if I had to drive twenty hours through a blizzard," Harry replied with amusement.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Please tell me that you didn't actually drive."

Harry shook his head. "Not this time, normally we just floo to the Leaky Cauldron then fly to your house after disillusioning ourselves."

"What do you do with the brooms?" Hermione asked curious where they'd stashed them.

"I put them In my inventory."

"You're going to have to explain that ability now that we can actually talk."

"If I knew how it worked, I'd tell you. I woke up with it after I got sent back."

"How are your parents still alive? I'd meant to ask but I didn't get a chance earlier.

"The last thing I remember before waking up in a void was getting hit by a bus."

"I remember trying to push you out of the way then nothing," Hermione admitted.

"After that I woke up in a black void with the words "Game Over" floating in the air. I thought it was a joke at first."

"You dreamed that you were stuck in a videogame?" Hermione asked in amusement.

"It wasn't a dream or if it was it was an extremely detailed dream. Either way, because I hadn't saved my game before, I had to start over."

"You're telling me you were stuck in a videogame?" Hermione asked in disbelief.

"Or something like it."

"Did Sirius put you up to this?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Even his sense of humor isn't that bad… okay, it might be but he doesn't have enough experience with video games to come up with the idea."

"I guess you have a point," Hermione admitted.

"I checked the options and fixed a couple of things then started a new 'game'."

"Options?"

"Things like background music and PG mode… which is probably what got us killed the last time around."

"Oh?"

"It promised, elder brothers, overprotective mothers and buses to keep everything squeaky clean."

"Buses? You're telling me that we died because of a stupid politically correct setting?!" Hermione asked in a harsh whisper.

"That's certainly one way to look at things. Either way, I could have tried to live through a computer game, complete with random monsters and other less sane events or I could try again with nothing to show for it. I picked option C, Champion mode."

"What did you get for Champion mode?"

"An inventory feature that lets me put things into an extradimensional space that freezes things in time and a save feature which lets me restore everything other than my memories and spell knowledge to the point when I 'saved' the game."

"That's crazy Harry… if you were anyone else…" Hermione shook her head.

"It gets better," Harry replied with amusement.

"What do you mean?"

"I'd enabled the tutorial in the options menu which meant that for a little while the world acted like a video game."

"Meaning?"

"Basically the tutorial explained skills and saving my 'game' and my inventory. Technically I was probably supposed to learn about my inventory then go to sleep ending the tutorial and resulting in my parents' death but I figured out how to get out the window and explore the cabin."

"Did you find anything interesting?"

"You could say that, I found stars that gave me interesting magical powers."

Hermione shook her head. "Now I know you're joking."

"I'm not, I had health and mana bars and everything. It took awhile to figure out how to get out of the room but I managed. I picked up enough stars to get the ability not to take damage from falling and eventually learned how to fly. So, I explored, long story short, I figured out I could glitch the tutorial and get more stars than I was supposed to. I found a set of wizard keys that opens a door to an extradimensional vault. Inside the vault was a portal generator that creates portals."

"That sounds familiar for some reason."

"Either way, I went splat in the dungeon and had to load my save game."

"Harry!" Hermione hissed.

"Yeah, I know, I wasn't being as careful as I probably should have been. I'll give you the full story later but fast forward a bit and I was caught exploring when I should have been napping and got locked in the living room with a younger version of Nymphadora. She gave me a quest, pick out my favorite book and she'd read it. I saved the game like an idiot so I could grab the right book only to realize I was stuck in there and things advanced once I handed her the book."

"That was…"

"I believe the word you're looking for is stupid," Harry admitted ruefully.

Hermione smirked. "I was trying to be polite."

"Either way, I realized that I could work on my pickpocketing skill by trying to 'steal' books off the shelf. I figured they were going to get destroyed anyways… so I worked on it for a bit but every time I get caught Nymphadora stole all of the books back, including the ones in my inventory. I realized that I might be able to keep them if I stuck them in my vault, so I borrowed a couple then transferred them to the vault. Eventually, I managed to clean out the shelves. That was probably the start of the insanity…"

"Insanity? What did you do?"

Harry shifted uncomfortably. "I figured… that if I could take books and items, I could take people with me."

"Harry, you didn't…"

"I had a save game, I figured I could just reload things if anything horrible happened. I grabbed Nymphadora's pant leg and used my keys and it worked… mostly."

"Mostly?"

"The second she appeared she stopped acting like a game character and I could talk like an adult so I explained that I had a magical dungeon and time loops and I needed her help. I got on her shoulders, equipped the invisibility cloak and we went looking for trouble."

Hermione rubbed her nose. "You're going to have to give me the rest of the story at some point."

"I know, I'm sort of starting in a weird place but there's a reason for that… so we manage to make it through the diggle dungeon by hook and by crook… mostly because of my cloak. We make it out, we chat for a bit and I grab the book I need prepared to meet my fate. I leave the vault and see Nymphadora sitting on the couch in front of a full book case. I jump back to the dungeon and Nymphadora is sitting on a stack of books exactly where I left her. The game had reset…"

"You have more than one copy of her library?"

"Oh yeah… it gets better, I figured if Dora and the library reset then there was a decent chance that the star in the closet had reset, so I ran over and sure enough there was a duplicate in the closet. I grabbed the star and used it… then looted the books again."

"What about Nymphadora?"

Harry blushed slightly. "I grabbed her as well… and found out I now had two Nymphadoras."

"Two of them?"

"Yep, I explained things to the 'new' Nymphadora then saved the game and went back into the dungeon then repeated the process a few times…"

Hermione asked, "How many times?"

"I lost count but I stopped grabbing Nymphs once I had a dozen," Harry replied with a mix of embarrassment and amusement.

"What happened to them when the tutorial ended?"

"Nothing they were in my vault." Harry smirked.

"You copied her a dozen times?" Hermione asked in disbelief.

"Yep, I also copied my mum, dad and Sirius… so I have two of each of them."

"Right, start at the beginning and don't leave anything out… I'm going to want to see the dungeon at some point."

"It's on the list as soon as we can find a good time to kidnap you for a day. Before I get to that, how much do you remember?"

"Everything up to the summer before seventh year then I'm missing some bits and pieces… I remember dancing with you, I remember Ron being an idiot, I remember wearing the damnaged horcrux for some reason… have you taken care of those yet?"

"Yeah, Voldemort has been dead for years."

"Add that to the list. I remember the battle… after is a bit sketchy, after that I remember heading to the hotel to have some 'fun' and then the bus."

"In other words, no idea how we ended up back here."

"Nope, sorry. Thanks for being my friend in both worlds Harry. Now spill." Hermione smiled at him.

"Right, let's see…" Harry went back through his story adding various details as he could remember them.

0o0o0

Harry smiled at Hermione as she stepped out of the fireplace. "Welcome to the madhouse."

Iris waved from where she was sitting on the back of the couch then turned and shouted, "Mione is here!"

Hermione raised an eyebrow as she noticed Harry's five year old sister was dressed up in old quidditch pads and had a small wand holster strapped to her forearm. "Pads?"

Rose walked in, dressed much the same as her sister/cousin. "Mum's orders, if we're going with you and Harry then we need armor."

Iris giggled. "This is going to be awesome."

Hermione turned to look at Harry. "I thought you said the dungeons were dangerous."

Harry said, "They're extremely dangerous if you don't have invisibility and moderately dangerous with it. I wouldn't take them if I didn't have a save feature. The main problem with the dungeon is that they're random which means there is always a chance that the diggle king spawns which means that we can't create time loops while in the dungeon as I really don't want to try to kill the boss unless I have to."

"I'd rather have an easy first run," Hermione admitted.

Rose snickered. "Our first run was awesome, the adults went in front of us and blasted everything that moved."

Iris grinned. "That was the best birthday ever."

Hermione glanced between Rose and Iris. "Ah, how many times have you been in the dungeon?"

Rose looked at Harry. "Harry has taken us in there a couple of times with just the Siriuses. This will be our first time without an adult."

Hermione blinked as two blue haired teenage girls that looked a lot like Tonks walked in. "Nymphadora?"

"Or Nymph or Sexy," the two girls replied at the same time.

Hermione looked over at Harry then back to the blue haired girls. 'I think Harry left out some details in his story.' She smiled at the two girls. "Right, so are you coming with us?... wait, shouldn't you be at school?"

Nymph smirked. "We are, we just slipped through the vanishing cabinet for the weekend."

"How?" Hermione turned and looked at Harry.

Harry said, "We bought the vanishing cabinet in Borgin's shop then moved the other cabinet to a secret passage that Dad and Sirius knew about that Filch didn't."

The other Nymphadora said, "The best part is we get to come back on the weekends and blow up monsters, it's awesome."

"Aren't you bored of monster hunting yet?" Hermione asked curiously.

Nymph smirked. "You wouldn't ask that if you saw how much gold the diggles drop."

Harry shrugged. "What can I say? It pays extremely well."

Iris looked at Rose. "I bet she's picturing how many books she can buy with a stack of gold coins."

Rose snorted, "I'm not taking that bet."

Hermione smiled at Rose to let her know she was right not to take the bet because she was thinking about building a library with the gold she could get. "So… how do we do this?"

Harry held out his arms. "You walk over and grab my arm and I pull everyone into the vault."

"Where are the cloaks?" Hermione walked over and grabbed Harry's arm.

The two Nymphadoras walked over and grabbed Harry's shoulders as his siblings walked over and grabbed his free hand. "I think we're good."

Harry activated his wizard keys and grinned at the surprised look on Hermione's face. "You thought I was joking didn't you?"

Hermione glanced around at the large piles of books. "The thought had crossed my mind."

"I wouldn't do that." Harry reached up and touched his nose. "Save game."

The ethereal voice said, "Game saved."

Hermione spun as she glanced around. "Who said that?"

Harry blinked a couple of times. "You heard that?"

Iris asked, "Heard what?"

"A strangely musical voice said game saved." Hermione glanced around warily.

Rose shook her head. "Didn't hear anything."

"You seriously didn't hear that?"

Harry sighed. "You're the first person other than me that can hear the voice, you're also the first person other than me to come back so that probably has something to do with it. We'll have to run some tests later."

Hermione nodded then glanced over at the portal device. "How does the device work?"

"I punch in random characters and we get a portal to a random diggle world then we put the cloaks on and go blast some nasty and evil penguin like monsters for gold and magical items." He walked over to the console for the portal device and typed in a random string of characters then hit enter.

Hermione blinked as the doorway lit up with red and black motes of light or not light in the case of the black. "That's a little spooky."

Harry cast muffle on everyone's shoes then pulled three invisibility cloaks out of his inventory. "I've muffled everyone's feet, try not to talk until we know the first room is cleared unless you need to mention a problem." He handed two of the cloaks to Nymph. "You two can take Iris and Rose, I'll take Mione or she'll take me since she's taller." He handed Hermione the third cloak. "Here."

Hermione put the cloak on then stepped closer to Harry. "Now what?"

"Now we walk through the portal and take a couple of steps so the others can get through."

"What happens if there are monsters?"

"We kill them or die and reset things," Harry replied absently as he slipped under the cloak with Hermione. He smiled as he walked through the portal with Hermione. He waited several seconds then tossed a ball of fire at the single sleepy Diggle he could see.

Hermione blinked as the diggle died and dropped a small stack of what looked like gold coins. She glanced around to make sure nothing else was around.

Harry whispered, "Okay, that should be everything, let's walk to the door and scout the next bit while the girls pick up the coins."

Hermione whispered, "You weren't joking about the gold were you?"

"If anything we underplayed how much we'll be making," Harry admitted as they carefully headed toward the hallway and adventures that would last a lifetime.

0o0o0

Luna Lovegood blinked as she walked into the kitchen and saw her mother sitting at the table with a large yellow exclamation point floating over her head. "Mummy? Why do you have an exclamation point over your head?"

Pandora Lovegood turned to look at her nine year old daughter. "Has Xeno been making tea again?"

Luna shook her head. She had a vague sense that something was wrong other than the fact that her mother had a large glowing exclamation point above her head but couldn't put her finger on why. "Not since he tried making tea out of Billywig venom."

"Okay pumpkin, can you get the mail?"

Luna blinked as a floating translucent blue sheet of not quite glass appeared with black words on it.

Long Term Quest Alert, Finding the Forgotten.

Collect the mail for Pandora Lovegood and take the first step to recovering your memories.

Failure to accept quest may result in death of at least one parental unit.

Quest Reward: Recover lost memories.

Accept Quest Yes/No?'

Luna blinked a couple of times as she stared at the quest. She reached out and very carefully selected yes then blinked as the quest window vanished and the yellow exclamation point over her mother's head turned into a grey question mark. 'Okay, let's grab the mail and see what happens.'

She walked out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the front door as she tried to figure out what she was supposed to do about getting quests. She couldn't remember her Daddy mentioning getting quests though that would sort of make sense with all of his monster hunts. She checked the mailbox by the door that the muggle postman used when they had a package. She reached down and grabbed a letter and a leather journal in the box. The leather journal vanished as she touched it.

She blinked as she realized that she knew how to make the journal reappear. She focused on the journal and it appeared in her hands. She opened the leather bound journal and looked at the first page. 'Finding the Forgotten, Luna's memories have been scattered to the four winds, use this book to collect the scattered memories and figure out what happened…" Luna paused as she recognized her handwriting on the page. It looked slightly more polished but it was definitely hers. 'Curious…' Luna flipped through the blank pages then let the journal vanish.

She looked down at the tetter . 'Two Pandora Lovegood, from L.L with love... That's my handwriting.' She took the letter and walked it back into the kitchen and paused as she noticed that the question mark over her mother's head was now yellow rather than grey. She walked over and handed her mother the letter then blinked the window that popped up.

Step one of Finding the Forgotten is complete, failure condition removed.

Pandora smiled at Luna. "Thank you Pumpkin. And ideas who L.L. is?"

"I'm not sure but I think it's important." She blinked as the quest window vanished.

Pandora grinned as she opened the letter then frowned as she pulled out a piece of parchment and started reading, "Pandora, your new spell had some errors, so I fixed them, please don't cast your original spell without running through the math again, I've included the corrections for you, Love L.L… P.S. Take your daughter out for ice cream..." she trailed off as she looked through the spell notes trying to figure out where they'd gotten an old tear stained copy of her notes in her handwriting no less.

Luna glanced down at a glowing photograph that had slipped out of the letter and fallen to the floor. "Did you drop something Mummy?"

Pandora looked down and around then looked back at the notes. "No, I'm just checking my work…" She was suddenly reminded of Lily Potter's rather pointed comment a couple of years ago at a get together about the importance of checking your work and not testing new spells without someone to watch your back. She went pale as she noticed the notes in the margin in red that explained why her new spell would probably have killed her if she'd cast the final version. "I think we need to get ice cream today…"

Luna asked, "Ice cream?"

"Yeah…" Pandora pulled herself back together enough that her voice wasn't shaking. "I don't feel like working on my research today. Let's get some ice cream."

"Ice cream is good." Luna waited until her mother turned and walked out of the kitchen to grab her coin purse then reached down the grabbed the glowing picture. She blinked as the picture vanished and she was swept away by a memory of her mother's gravesite. She could suddenly 'remember' how shattered her mother's death had left her father and her. She had brief flashes of a room in a stone castle with a trunk that she knew was missing things but she couldn't remember what was missing. That scene changed into a memory of a bushy haired witch and a teenage male with emerald eyes and a lightning bolt scar looking at her mother's gravesite with her. She blinked as she found herself back in the kitchen. She could almost remember their names and yet she knew she'd never seen them before. "Friends…"

The journal appeared in her hands then flipped open to show a picture of the bushy haired girl, a red haired girl that looked more familiar than the rest and the man with a lightning bolt scar. She wasn't sure exactly what was going on but she knew that the answer lay in finding more photographs and completing her journal.

The End


End file.
